Led by Taft’s Dean of Community, Justice, and Belonging Thomas Allen and accompanied by faculty members Caitlin Hincker and Samuel Rosario, six Taft students traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, where they visited the acclaimed Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. Collectively, these spaces are known as The Legacy Sites. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) opened the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in 2018 as part of their national effort to “create new spaces, markers, and memorials that address the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation.” EJI added Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in 2024.

The Legacy Six—Teni Arole ’26, Sophie Brown ’25, Xander Chatterjee ’25, and Ny’ana Hauser ’25, Jabari King ’26, and Isaac Obeng ’26—also visited the 16th Street Baptist Church and Kelly Ingram Park, in Birmingham, Alabama. Each student was profoundly moved by the experience and spoke eloquently about the spaces and the feelings they evoked during a Morning Meeting talk that preceded and introduced Taft’s on-site Legacy Museum. Snapshots of their journey and reflections from their Morning Meeting talk follow.

Reflections
“We traveled to Montgomery and Birmingham where we visited The Legacy Sites and immersed ourselves in the powerful history that comes with being in those spaces. The trip was filled with learning, thinking, reflecting, and leaning into both the ugly and the beauty of what history holds, and how it has evolved into what we see in the present day.”—Sophie

The 16th Street Baptist Church
On September 15, 1963, a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killed Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, all 14 years old, and 11-year-old Cynthia Wesley. Twenty-two others, including Addie’s sister Sarah, 12, were injured, but survived the bombing. It was described by Dr. King as “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.”

“At the church, we discussed the history of where we were and what it meant to America. It was a surreal feeling, knowing the power this building held.”—Xander

“On a stone inside of the church there is a quote that says, ‘They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.’ To know that decades later I’d be standing in the same spot fighting for the same thing was truly humbling.”—Ny’Ana

Kelly Ingram Park
Across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church is Kelly Ingram Park. Now part of the United States Civil Rights Trail, the park once served as an assembly spot for marches, sit-ins and other activities organized by Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“There was and still is an unspoken power in the freeze-frames of history captured in the sculptures spread through the park. The choice to have each person frozen in a vulnerable position, whether kneeling or in evident fear, was impactful in that it made us see and feel exactly how people felt in that time.”—Isaac

“In the middle of the park there was a powerful saying: Reconciliation. Revolution. That made me think about how these two things work together and how one of these things cannot start without the other.”—Jabari

The Legacy Museum
On the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to labor in bondage, the Legacy Museum tells the story of slavery in America and its legacy through interactive media, first person narratives, art, and exhibits. The museum offers a comprehensive history of racial oppression, from the slave trade, Jim Crow, and racial terror lynchings to mass incarcerations in the present day.

“The Legacy Museum threw facts at us—hard, stone-cold facts without any inkling of a bias of creators. Through these facts, we were able to form our own understanding of the events that transpired. And through our understanding, we were able to perceive their impact.”—Isaac

“At the end of the museum there was a very powerful quote by Mary McLeod Bethune: ‘If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.’”—Jabari

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is a six-acre site dedicated to the victims of racial terror lynchings. More than 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950 are remembered here. Their names are engraved on more than 800 steel monuments—one for each county where a racial terror lynching took place. There is also a monument to unknown victims.

“This site is a sacred place for those souls who died in violence to rest in peace.”—Jabari

“One can read and hear about such events, but it is an entirely different experience when you feel the true weight of it.”—Teni

“A mile-long walk of hanging caskets, names—thousands of them—and still, so many who will never be known.”—Sophie

“One can read and hear about such events, but it is an entirely different experience when you feel the true weight of it.”—Teni

“A mile-long walk of hanging caskets, names—thousands of them—and still, so many who will never be known.”—Sophie

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park

Freedom Monument Sculpture Park is a 17-acre site dedicated to the memory of the more than 10 million Black people who were enslaved in America. The site overlooks the Alabama River, where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked.

“Each sculpture represented the power, the strength, and also the struggle of enslaved America.” —Xander

“Standing in places where there were nothing but the echoes of screams, I’ve never felt more at peace.”—Ny’Ana

“The National Monument to Freedom brought tears to my eyes. It was incredibly powerful to see the sculpture with the list of names of 122,000 enslaved individuals. So many emotions fluttered through my body. I thought it was important to note that millions of others suffered under the palm of slavery and that they must be remembered as well.”—Isaac

A Sweeping Journey: Taft’s Own Legacy Museum
At the heart of the journey: a transformative, multisensory passage through time; a sobering walk through Taft’s halls and common spaces which were, for just one day, a monument—a living history museum—offering an unflinching look at slavery, racial segregation, injustice, and a history that cried out for reform; a cry answered, in part, by Dr. King.

The sound of ocean waves washed over visitors in the museum’s anteroom, the first stop on their journey through Taft’s Legacy Museum. The sounds of the ocean, wrote Ganung, evoked “the ominous feeling that we were about to board a slave ship embarking on the terrifying journey known as The Middle Passage.” The experience that followed was equally haunting: a room transformed in the image of a slave market; historical photographs of enslaved people; headlines referencing lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and segregation; a photograph of a mile-long walk through 800 hanging caskets, engraved with the names of 4,400 Black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950.

Every member of the Taft community made this journey. Along the way, they learned not only from the museum’s exhibits, but from student docents, Taft’s Legacy Six, whose study and travels served as inspiration for Taft’s Legacy Museum, and whose hard work brought the experience to life.

“Our goal was to create an experience that would replicate the feelings we had visiting the Legacy Museum, Kelly Ingraham Park, and the 16^th Street Baptist Church,” explained Legacy Six member Teni Arole ’26. “We wanted to bring back the legacy and the history of African Americans, from the transatlantic slave trade, the domestic slave trade, the Reconstruction Era, the lynching era, incarceration, and Martin Luther King. The power of history is telling the truth, no matter what it looks like.”

Learn more about Taft’s Legacy Museum in the video below:

 

A Personal Journey
Dean of Community, Justice, and Belonging Thomas Allen delivered a very personal Morning Meeting talk about legacy; the legacy of oppression that cried out for revolution, reformation, and reconciliation; that cried out for the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Jim Crow was a not a man, but a character created on stage in 1828 by a struggling actor—the original blackface character. The depiction planted seeds and shaped perceptions that made it “really, really challenging,” Allen said, “to do the right thing; to treat everyone equally.”

“Black codes”—laws of racial segregation—defined the Jim Crow era. From 1865 to 1965—long after the Emancipation Proclamation—true freedom remained elusive for African Americans, especially those living in the south. It was in the middle of this 100-year period of racial oppression and segregation that Gladys Marie Gray was born. GG. Thomas Allen’s grandmother.

“My grandmother was born into the Jim Crow South,” said Allen. “GG, was born in Wilson, North Carolina, in 1925. Sometimes things don’t resonate with you until they really hit you. I never really thought about what her life was like until I began thinking about this experience and opportunity.”

Jim Crow laws meant GG could only attend school with other Black children. She walked miles and miles to school each day.

“In 1925, that was normal. She didn’t know any different,” noted Allen.

GG worked on a farm. She picked cotton and tobacco. She made clothes out of potato sacks. She hoped to sell goods from the farm, but neighbors could not pay.

In 1943, GG made a hard decision: she left her family in North Carolina and moved to Philadelphia. It was there that she met Allen’s grandfather who, on a fateful day in 1963, asked her to join him on a bus ride to Washington, D.C.

“She didn’t know what she was going for, but I imagine that this is what she heard on that bus ride,” Allen said, as Taft students delivered a powerfully moving a cappella rendition of We Shall Overcome.

The day was, of course, August 28, 1963. GG was among the hundreds of thousands gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his dream for America.

“I would argue that everyone who was there is a part of Dr. King’s legacy.”

Watch Thomas Allen’s full “Legacy” talk.