Border/Arte’s work is rooted in amplifying the voices of women, queer, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and other marginalized communities through place-based cultural collaboration and political imagination. This Alabama Civil Rights Research Trip extends that mission beyond the U.S./Mexico borderlands to trace the geographies of resistance that have shaped struggles for liberation across the South.
By visiting both iconic and lesser-known organizing sites—safe houses, rural schools, and community spaces led by women and queer organizers—we are engaging with the strategies, cultural practices, and disciplined networks of care that sustained historic movements. Alabama, a site of both profound freedom struggles and entrenched white supremacy, offers critical lessons for confronting today’s resurgence of authoritarianism and racial violence.
Through this trip, Border/Arte connects borderlands cultural work to the broader continuum of U.S. freedom struggles, deepening our capacity to organize, create, and imagine across geographies. This is both a feminist and political imperative: to learn from the past so we can act with clarity, solidarity, and precision in the present.
Alabama
Alabama traces both the iconic and lesser-known geographies of the Civil Rights Movement. From Montgomery to Birmingham, Selma to Lowndes County, we will visit major landmarks of resistance alongside smaller, often overlooked organizing sites—safe houses, rural schools, and community meeting spaces that sustained the Movement from the ground up. These intimate spaces were often led by women, queer organizers, and local community members whose labor remains under-acknowledged. Alabama is both a crucible of freedom struggles and a historical site of white supremacy—its landscapes hold the legacies of enslavement, racial terror, segregation, and state repression. Today, we are witnessing a resurgence of white supremacist ideology emboldened by the current administration’s attacks on civil rights infrastructure: criminalizing protest, censoring curricula, rolling back voting rights, and using state power to persecute dissent. Returning to these sites is both a feminist and political imperative. Intersectional analysis reveals how movements were sustained not only through charismatic leadership but through networks of care, strategic coordination, and everyday acts of defiance in kitchens, churches, and classrooms. These spaces hold the stories of those who strategized late into the night, shielded communities from state violence, and nurtured intergenerational visions of liberation. By centering lesser-known organizing spaces, this trip challenges sanitized narratives of the Civil Rights era and highlights that resistance is communal, disciplined, and deeply rooted in local communities. Learning from the strategies, risks, and collective courage of those who came before us equips us to confront today’s white supremacist and authoritarian tactics with clarity, solidarity, and precision.
By visiting both iconic and lesser-known organizing sites—safe houses, rural schools, and community spaces led by women and queer organizers—we are engaging with the strategies, cultural practices, and disciplined networks of care that sustained historic movements. Alabama, a site of both profound freedom struggles and entrenched white supremacy, offers critical lessons for confronting today’s resurgence of authoritarianism and racial violence.
Through this trip, Border/Arte connects borderlands cultural work to the broader continuum of U.S. freedom struggles, deepening our capacity to organize, create, and imagine across geographies. This is both a feminist and political imperative: to learn from the past so we can act with clarity, solidarity, and precision in the present.
Alabama
Alabama traces both the iconic and lesser-known geographies of the Civil Rights Movement. From Montgomery to Birmingham, Selma to Lowndes County, we will visit major landmarks of resistance alongside smaller, often overlooked organizing sites—safe houses, rural schools, and community meeting spaces that sustained the Movement from the ground up. These intimate spaces were often led by women, queer organizers, and local community members whose labor remains under-acknowledged. Alabama is both a crucible of freedom struggles and a historical site of white supremacy—its landscapes hold the legacies of enslavement, racial terror, segregation, and state repression. Today, we are witnessing a resurgence of white supremacist ideology emboldened by the current administration’s attacks on civil rights infrastructure: criminalizing protest, censoring curricula, rolling back voting rights, and using state power to persecute dissent. Returning to these sites is both a feminist and political imperative. Intersectional analysis reveals how movements were sustained not only through charismatic leadership but through networks of care, strategic coordination, and everyday acts of defiance in kitchens, churches, and classrooms. These spaces hold the stories of those who strategized late into the night, shielded communities from state violence, and nurtured intergenerational visions of liberation. By centering lesser-known organizing spaces, this trip challenges sanitized narratives of the Civil Rights era and highlights that resistance is communal, disciplined, and deeply rooted in local communities. Learning from the strategies, risks, and collective courage of those who came before us equips us to confront today’s white supremacist and authoritarian tactics with clarity, solidarity, and precision.