The Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Ala. started Day 2 of the Clearwater High Civil Rights Tour.  Students experienced a simulation of the Dec. 1, 1955 day that Rosa Parks decided that she was not going to give up her seat on a bus. Parks' decision led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott which is considered the spark that started the Civil Rights Movement in America.

There are 22 students participating in the Clearwater High Civil Rights Tour, a project-based personalized learning opportunity. During the school year, students researched experiences that connects them to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

The culmination of this project is an in-depth tour of sites with historical significance for the Civil Rights Movement. Other cities visited during the tour are Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, Ala., and Memphis, Tenn. The students are meeting key stakeholders, active participants and spectators of these important events. The is the third year for the tour which started Thursday in Atlanta.

The Civil Rights Memorial Center, also in Montgomery, was the next stop of the day. The center featured exhibits and an original short film that encouraged reflection of individual activism while honoring those who died during the Civil Rights Movement. Outside the center is a circular black granite table with streaming water that chronicles the movement.

A walk over the Edmond Pettus Bridge that spans the Alabama River in Selma, Ala. was the next stop and led to a conversation about Bloody Sunday which occurred on March 7, 1965. Protesters were set to march 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery for the right for blacks to vote. But on the Edmond Pettus bridge, protestors met resistance from law enforcement on horses.  Once Clearwater High students reached the other side of the bridge on Friday, they discussed the event that was a catalyst for black voting rights.

The students then visited Brown Chapel AMC Church, which was a meeting place during the movement. There, Lawrence Huggins, a physical education teacher at the time, detailed his efforts during the Teachers March in 1965 and the events that led up to Bloody Sunday.

On their return from the tour, the student participants, also known as CHS Freedom Ambassadors, will lead a project-based learning experience for other Pinellas County Schools school groups. Clearwater High School is part of the first group of schools in the district to implement Personalized Learning through the district’s Pinellas Innovates plan.