In 1997, womanist theologian M. Shawn Copeland gave a public lecture at Santa Clara University entitled “Memory, Emancipation, and Hope: Political Theology in the ‘Land of the Free.’” In this important lecture, she developed a political theology for the US. Her first thesis is: “Theology as political in the United States will grow out of the critical recovery of the memories of the oppressed and marginalized Indians, Africans, and mestizos.” Before we were talking about White fragility in academia, Copeland wrote: “The Whites are those who do not, and seem not to want to, remember… We people of the United States are ahistorical, even, anti-historical; at the same time, we are, as Ralph Ellison has remarked, ‘notoriously selective in the exercise of historical memory.’”
In my own life, I have found this to be true. As a White Catholic who grew up in Alabama in the 80’s and 90’s, I certainly learned about race relations and the civil rights movement in school. But this learning was often awkward, oversimplified, and detached from my identity as White and Catholic. (I’ve written previously about my experience as an ambassador for my city, a role that included volunteering at garden parties at plantation homes while ignoring the dehumanizing violence of a plantation’s history. That’s just one example.) As a parent today, in this time of Trump 2.0, I wanted to continue my own education and discuss my country’s racial history with my children as they are coming into their own awareness of their positionality.
The first task of political theology, Copeland teaches me, is to tell the truth about the past, centering the narratives of the oppressed. In the second term of the Trump administration, we should not underestimate how contested such a task is; this administration has attacked DEI education, defunded museums, and advocated for a “patriotic education” that distorts the truth about systemic racism in US history. With threats to museums and the National Park Service, I felt a sense of urgency. A well-structured museum can open our minds and our hearts at the same time, bringing together aesthetic, affective, and intellectual components in an immersive learning experience.
There are many wonderful resources that can equip parents with the tools to begin these conversations today. Board books for toddlers such as A is for Activist and chapter books for young readers such as Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr? help parents start conversations well before the teenage years.
I’ve written previously about how pilgrimage is a mindset different than tourism; I was hoping that a pilgrimage focusing on racial injustice and resistance movements would create opportunities for hard conversations about the White privilege my family experiences.
We prepared for the pilgrimage in a few ways. At a summer family reunion, I asked my parents to share about their experiences growing up in the South during the 1950’s and 1960’s. While I had heard some of these stories before, it was the first time that my daughters heard about their grandparents’ experiences, which included discussions of family members using the “n-word,” neighborhood segregation, Klan neighbors, and the safety and logistical challenges of hosting an integrated Boy Scout troop.
To these personal narratives, we added movie nights. Three generations sat together to watch and discuss Selma, and the older teens watched episode five of the Eyes on the Prize documentary. The medium of film is powerful, especially for teens, and we found that the films jump-started conversations about voting rights, activism, and the role of the Black churches in the civil rights struggle. We asked ourselves what sacrifices we would be willing to make.
Knowing that my kids enjoy and are moved by music, we also collaborated on a playlist that we listened to on our drive. Our route took us along the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, with stops over four days at the following locations:
- Lowndes Interpretive Center
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- National Voting Rights Museum and Institute Selma
- Brown Chapel AME Church Selma
- City of St. Jude Montgomery
- Rosa Parks Arrest Bus Stop Montgomery
- Legacy Sites Museums Montgomery
- Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site
At each location, we found ways of making connections to our own questions and lives. The “shoebox meal” displayed at the Lowndes Interpretive Center explained that Black families who traveled could not stop to eat at White-only gas stations and restaurants, so families packed food in shoeboxes so they could eat along their route. I asked the kids to think about how this contrasted with our experience of eating at Waffle House that morning. We debriefed in the car but also created space for each of us to just sit with the hard stories we heard.
In the US today, the material found within the Legacy Museum and the Voting Rights Museum, and landmarks such as the Edmund Pettus Bridge constitute what German theologian Johann Baptist Metz called “dangerous memories.” K. Merianexplains that “dangerous memory challenges those who tell and listen to it and can motivate people to review their assumptions about the present.” Metz’s understanding of dangerous memories shaped my journal reflections during our pilgrimage.
Tuesday
I’m dripping with sweat, my eyes straining in the bright sun, feeling overheated on this 95-degree July day. As we journey across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, I try to imagine what it was like on March 7, 1965, when Sheriff Jim Clark and his violent posse used batons, horses, and tear gas to brutalize nonviolent marchers. Those brave men and women sought to raise awareness about the racist policies that prevented Black citizens from being able to register to vote. I think about the segregationist governor George Wallace, who praised White citizens for having “freedom-loving blood,” as he defended the racial hierarchy saying that segregation was “best for both races.” Amelia Boynton was beaten unconscious that day. Having spent years trying to register Black voters, she knew the cruelty of the White Citizens’ Council and the Ku Klux Klan well before Bloody Sunday. Yet she answered that call to become a nonviolent witness that day. I think about the Edmundites and their ministry and service in Selma, the way they modeled solidarity even before King’s national call to church leaders to join the movement after Bloody Sunday. I feel shame. How have I downplayed—consciously or unconsciously—the benefits I have received on account of being White in this state? I feel confusion and frustration. How have we let voter suppression campaigns gain traction again? Why isn’t there more awareness and resistance to the dirty politics at work today? I am drawn to prayer. Come, Holy Spirit. Stir in me. Stir in us. Come, Holy Spirit.
Thursday
We’re on a boat on the Alabama River- the same river we walked across Tuesday when we were in Selma. Now we’re in Montgomery, alongside the train tracks as we go from one Legacy site to another. The Alabama River was a primary portal for the enslaved; the Legacy Sites museum markers explain that train cars were used to bring enslaved people here, and boats carrying as many as two hundred enslaved persons traveled up and down this river for decades. Human beings were literally bought and sold, treated as property with instrumental, not intrinsic, value. White people exploited racist ideologies to expand their power and used cruelty to stay in power. I talk to the kids about how we see these same patterns in today’s news.
A short time later, I’m standing in a cold, dark room in the air-conditioned museum, captivated by the image of ocean waves crashing towards me on a twenty-foot tall video projected on the wall of this room. This video exhibit invites me to mourn lives lost on the Middle Passage. Honoring those whose lives ended “in a watery grave,” as well as the stories of enslaved peoples who endured family separation, whipping, rape, and other cruelties, this portion of the museum is hard-hitting and powerful. The Transatlantic Slave Trade exhibit features sculptures by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo in remembrance of more than twelve million African men, women, and children who were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Americas. The sculptures force me to stand before faces of people—people beautiful, strong, and brave, who experienced unspeakable cruelty in this country that likes to call itself the land of the free. The Warehouse Exhibit uses technology to bring to life the narratives of enslaved peoples, who seem as ghosts jailed behind iron gates. From here, we move to sections focusing on racial terror and lynching, Jim Crow laws, and mass incarceration. As I’m reading the names of lynching victims at the soil exhibit, my daughter and niece join me. “Are these ashes?” They ask. “Why would White people want to watch someone getting killed?” They’ve just read about spectacle lynching, and are having a hard time processing what they learned on the other wall. I stop and listen to their questions, and we lament together. That’s why we are here.
Talking to young people about our failures in racial justice is an important part of family life, Catholic education and spiritual formation more broadly. It is too early to know how a pilgrimage like this will impact us. While the facts and statistics are certainly important, what I hope stays with me is that deep feeling of being unsettled. Whether moved to tears by the use of storytelling and art, or disgusted by descriptions of human cruelty, I tried to witness, mourn, and reflect, modeling for my children the importance of life-long learning and ongoing vocational discernment. Our pilgrimage to Selma, Montgomery, and Tuskegee gave me a new appreciation of the dangerous memories that museums conjure, and of the importance of keeping those memories ever present. Parenting in 2026 will mean, for me, continued conversations about what we learned about everyday activism in the civil rights movement, and how we can apply those strategies to what is happening in the US today. As Ella’s Song reminds us, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”
Selected Bibliography
Copeland, M. Shawn. “Memory, Emancipation, and Hope: Political Theology in the ‘Land of the Free’. Public lecture, Santa Clara University, November 9, 1997. https://www.scu.edu/media/ignatian-center/santa-clara-lecture/Copeland.pdf
Merian, K. “Dangerous Memory in Johann Baptist Metz’s Political Theology,” Remembering Marielle Franco from a Theological Perspective, in the series New Approaches to Religion and Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-65353-7_2
Metz, Johann Baptist. Zur Theologie der Welt, 101-104.
Pratt, Tia Noelle, #BlackCatholicSyllabus, https://tiapratt.com/blackcatholicssyllabus/
Reimer-Barry, Emily. “Past Imperfect” Changemaker Blog, 2015. https://usdchangemakerhub.blogspot.com/2015/12/past-imperfect-from-azalea-trail-maid.html.
U.S. Civil Rights Trail, https://civilrightstrail.com/.
White House, “Ending Racial Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” (January 29, 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/.
White House, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” (March 27, 2025), https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/.