In late November, students from two of the school’s Impact classes, Beyond the Bars: Voices of Incarceration, taught by Heid Hojinicki, and From Shadows to Spotlight: Black History and Arts in America, taught by Megan Hilliard, embarked on a profound three-day educational journey to Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. Supported by the Conrad Fund, the trip invited students to experience firsthand the places, stories, and people that shape both America’s history and its ongoing struggle for justice.

The courses found a shared center of gravity in Montgomery, home to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and its constellation of memorials and museums founded by attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson, known widely for his memoir Just Mercy, has dedicated his career to defending the incarcerated, confronting racial injustice, and transforming public understanding of the relationship between past and present injustices. “Stevenson believes that educating about our history is so vital to changing our future,” Upper School English teacher Hedi Hojinki, who accompanied the students on the trip, said, “From slavery to mass incarceration, it’s all linked. Without knowing our history, we will continue to discriminate blindly.”

Day One
Narrated Riverboat Ride, Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, Meeting with EJI Attorney Charlotte Morrison, National Memorial for Peace & Justice

The trip began on the waters of the Alabama River, the same route where enslaved Africans were once trafficked and sold.  From there, the students entered the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, a sweeping outdoor installation honoring African and Native ancestors and tracing the arc from enslavement to emancipation.

One of the most affecting moments came as students explored the Wall of the Emancipated, an expansive installation inscribed with the names of people freed after slavery. An EJI staff member helped students search for last names, an experience that underscored how many emancipated people retained the surnames of those who once enslaved them.

Later, students met EJI senior attorney Charlotte Morrison, who explained the decades-long efforts to document lynchings and the rigorous historical verification behind the memorials. She emphasized EJI’s belief that historical truth-telling is essential to ending cycles of inequality and mass incarceration today.

At the National Memorial for Peace & Justice, students walked beneath suspended steel monuments, each representing a county where lynchings occurred. The memorial demands a quiet, reflective attention. Hojinicki said that the experience was profoundly meaningful for all the students.

Day Two
Kelly Ingram Park, 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Five Points Neighborhood

A schedule shift brought the group to Birmingham, once a center of the civil rights movement and still a living monument to its triumphs and tragedies. Students toured the 16th Street Baptist Church, where a white supremacist bombing in 1963 killed four Black girls. 

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute offered a deeper immersion through interactive exhibits. Even as they grappled with difficult histories, the group made space for joy and grounding, exploring shops in the Five Points neighborhood and bonding throughout the day.

Day Three
Legacy Museum & Bama Lanes Bowling

The final day returned the group to Montgomery for a visit to the Legacy Museum, which traces the continuum from enslavement to segregation to mass incarceration. Its exhibits, including holographic narratives, archival materials, and jars of soil collected from documented lynching sites, are directly connected to the curriculum of Beyond the Bars. Many students recognized concepts from class discussions: racialized policing, sentencing disparities, and the legal barriers faced by people reentering society after incarceration.

The teachers, mindful of the emotional weight of the material, built intentional time for connection and joy. That evening, the group unwound at Bama Lanes, where bowling, laughter, and shared meals balanced the heaviness of the day’s learning. Each night, students gathered in a reflection circle, journaling, sharing experiences, and listening to one another. “It was impressive the way the students were so generous with sharing and being vulnerable and really listening to one another,” Hojnicki said. “It was kind of magical.”

Students brought forward personal histories, emotional reactions, questions about justice, and realizations that challenged assumptions. One student admitted that he had grown up hearing never go to the South, only to find warmth and kindness from every person they met, a stereotype that was replaced with a deeper understanding. Another asked museum staff what it is like to work daily amid such emotionally heavy material, sparking conversations about remembrance, responsibility, and resilience.

Hojnicki emphasized their goal that students leave not with despair, but with agency, the conviction that history is ongoing and that they are inheritors of its next chapter. “They are inheriting the future, not that they have to change everything overnight,” she said, “but to understand that with effort progress can be made.”

Over three days, students traced the footsteps of activists, artists, and ordinary people who shaped the nation. They confronted painful truths, found moments of joy, and strengthened their community through reflection and conversation. Most of all, they learned that history is not static: it lives in our systems, our choices, and our willingness to face the past honestly.