Newberry High School’s African American history class took a trip to Montgomery, Alabama to look at the experiences documented in their classroom learning. 

Out of 27 students in the class, 20 were able to make the trip, according to the class’s teacher, Jordan Marlowe. On the first day, the group made the six-hour drive and went directly to spend about two hours at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial for over 4,400 Black people killed in lynchings across the country between 1877 and 1950. 

“You can learn out of a textbook, but it’s hard to feel out of a textbook,” Marlowe said in a phone interview. “And there is no way to replicate the emotions when you are standing at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and you are looking at the names of the victims from your home county.” 

After the memorial, the class headed to the Rosa Parks Museum, where students saw a live reenactment of the Rosa Parks bus incident. 

The next morning, the class went to a newly-remodeled Legacy Museum, spending about three hours taking in the exhibits before driving back to Newberry. Marlowe said though the trip was brief, it was powerful, fun and educational. 

Marlowe said the memorial and museums provided a “visceral impact” to go with the academic material they have covered in class. He said some subjects in history require an emotional attachment to understand the issues, and the national conversation around African American history is one. 

“Once I understand the emotions that people were enduring in the Civil Rights movement, once I understand what was happening in Jim Crowe America and I understand why people were responding in that moment, the way they were responding, it helps me make a connection to how people are responding today, because trauma is generational,” Jordan said.  

That kind of connection can be tricky in a classroom setting, especially in a community with a deep local history tied to the subject. Marlowe said the first time he taught the class, he did not realize he had a student descended from a victim’s family, sitting beside a student whose ancestor was the victimizer. 

“That was a poor moment for me as a teacher, that I didn’t know that ahead of time and was able to prepare them for that,” Marlowe said. “But it has also taught me that in a small town, everybody knows everybody, the descendants are all amongst ourselves still.” 

Now Marlowe said he approaches the subject with more care in his classroom. At the beginning of the semester, he asks students if they know what a lynching is—many do not. He involves students’ feedback in how to refer to different subjects, such as whether to use the word “Black” or “African American.” 

Marlowe said the Montgomery trip was only possible through funding provided by the Children’s Trust of Alachua County and the Alachua County League of Cities. He also recognized NHS Principal James Sheppard for putting in the extra work to make an overnight field trip possible. 

“The normal response when something’s not easy is to just say no, you can’t do that. It’s too much work. Too much liability,” Marlowe said. “And [Sheppard] didn’t take that stance… He even came on the bus with us. This community is fantastic, from funding to believing that we can. And that’s why we do it.” 

Marlowe, who is also mayor of Newberry, said he has been planning to take his class to Montgomery since he went with a group of community members in 2019. 

At the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in 2019, a member of the community group asked why Newberry was not represented. Marlowe said that question eventually led to a partnership with the Equal Justice Institute, including historical markers, essay contests and a soil collection ceremony in memory of the “Newberry 6” and other lynching victims. 

Eight jars remained in Newberry as a memorial to the victims, six for the “Newberry 6” and two for nameless victims. Another eight jars went to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. 

The same year that the Newberry community group went to Montgomery, African American history was offered for the first time at NHS, and the class held a fundraiser specifically for the trip. Then the COVID-19 pandemic reached the United States and the trip was shut down. 

Five years later, Marlowe took the first class trip to Montgomery after finishing a unit on the Newberry lynchings. When the group made it to the memorial, Marlowe said the students found Newberry’s jars on their own and pointed them out to him, remembering the names they had just learned about in class. 

That moment, Marlowe said, was powerful for him because it showed him and his students that Newberry was represented because of the community’s own work to commemorate and acknowledge its history. 

Marlowe said one of his points in African American history is to not only acknowledge the accomplishments of famous names like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but also lesser-known local activists. 

“If we don’t acknowledge the armies of local activists who are boots on the ground, organizing the marches, organizing the protests, organizing the carpools… then we miss out on 99% of the history, and we tacitly impart the message to kids that unless you’re Dr. King, you really can’t do anything,” Marlowe said. “And Dr. King is fantastic, but Dr. King couldn’t have been Dr. King without 1,000 volunteers making sure that the movement was moving.”