In 2015, the CSSJ developed a unique initiative for Hope High School, a public school in Providence, RI, called the Civil Rights Movement Initiative (CRMI). This initiative aimed to help high school students understand the Civil Rights Movement as a bridge to understand the present. Tasked with conceptualizing some of the Center’s first youth programs, Hope High Alum and then CSSJ Graduate Fellow, Maiyah Gamble-Rivers, pitched the idea of working with her alma mater to engage students with a history that she herself was unfamiliar with. Once a week for six weeks students met at the CSSJ to explore different aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. These weekly workshops were designed to expose students to this difficult history and to prepare them to join the immersive trip that The Park School of Baltimore (Private), Baltimore City College (International Baccalaureate), and City Neighbors High School (Charter) had been doing for more than fifteen years.
The seven-day trip provided a diverse group of students the opportunity to visit historic sites and museums commemorating the Civil Rights Movement, and to meet the Movement’s veterans and activists. The trip South has provided historic context for students to engage in meaningful conversations about racism, social privilege, educational inequality, and economic disparity in the United States today. To conclude the program students held a public lunch talk at Brown University, sharing their experience with students, faculty, staff and the community.
Each year a collective of 32 students from the four schools came together for a journey through this history. Over the last four years, the CSSJ has sponsored 20 Hope High students to join the 108 students from Baltimore on this trip. Since collaborating on the annual Baltimore Civil Rights Trip, the CSSJ has seen an immense impact on Providence students’ sense of identity, performance in school and investment in their communities. In order to expand access to this opportunity, the CSSJ is expanding the program to serve more students from the city of Providence. Our next three years will be spent scaling up the program, serving 21 students a year. Ultimately, we hope to serve twice that number of students annually.