Freedom Road

Posted on 9.08.2011

The Summer 2011 edition of ACU Today is now out. ACU alumni will be checking their mailboxes. But everyone can go to the online version of the magazine here. (I recommend you go into Fullscreen mode and use the zoom button.)

I point you to this edition because there is a feature article within about the Freedom Ride class I was a part of during the summer. Many of you followed our progress on the class blog I kept.

Our ACU Today feature--entitled Freedom Road--begins with the stunning spread on pages 46-47 of the online edition. The feature includes powerful photography (historical and pictures from the trip, one of me playing freedom songs on my guitar as our bus rolled down the road), student reflections, a bit of Civil Rights history, and an article I wrote.

The student reflections are particularly moving.

I am deeply grateful to Ron Hadfield and the ACU Today staff. The Freedom Road piece is beautiful, emotionally powerful and spiritually uplifting. But what I love most about the feature is how it has captured, in words and pictures, one of the most amazing experiences I've had as a teacher. The 2011 Freedom Ride was ACU at its best.


And the march continues...

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5 thoughts on “Freedom Road”

  1. Just read through the ACU article. This is powerful stuff especially since my wife took me to see "The Help" movie Tuesday night.  As I was watching the movie, I kept getting angrier at the injustice of it all... and wondered how in the segregated south, Christian men and women could go and sit with a clear conscience in church on Sundays when a whole race of people were treated so badly at their hands. I can't even believe it was our country within the last 50 years. I don't think I ever care to see a rebel flag ever again. Good post.

  2. Thank you for sharing this...I am all the more convinced of the deep need for my students (high school seniors and freshmen in college) to experience this kind of remembering as well. We are in Birmingham. The reminders are all around us...but they are tragically unfamiliar to most of the "white middle class americans" who live here. I'm on it. Thanks for the prod and push. 

  3. "The Help" is my pick for the Academy Award' s Best Picture, and probably several other categories too. I'm now reading the book.
    We spent 7 years living in Charleston, SC when my husband was in the Air Force. It was a genuine culture shock. The Civil War began there, and continues in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

  4. This is an interesting perspective on The Help http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/4991/why_i_will_not_see_the_help%3A_a_rant/

  5. Yes, truly, I feel so proud to be a subject of the British Isles, who can boast that when his country saw the evil of this institution worked so mightily to end it. The vile dislocation of families for the caprice of economic benefit. I thank God that we have moved on to the more enlightened form of Capitalism where now we have the joyful dislocation of families, of whole communities, for the necessity of economic demands - but it's about choice, for our modern idol must be served.

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