Coastal Journey 2025

More enslaved Africans first set foot on land in Charleston than anywhere else in North America, and the interstate slave trade was just as significant there. It's no wonder John C. Calhoun and other South Carolina political figures resisted abolition at all costs and that the first shots of the Civil War came at Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor.

In June 2015 at Mother Emanuel AME, one of the South's oldest Black churches, the pastor and eight parishioners were gunned down during Scripture study by a young white supremacist. The church is on a street still named for Calhoun.

We'll build our stay around the International African American Museum (opened earlier this year on the former Gadsden’s Wharf, where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans were first brought to the United States).

We'll also visit other important locations, including the:

• McLeod Plantation Historic Site, once a leader in local cotton production thanks to its enslaved Gullah Geechee people, whose descendants of the enslavedcontinued to live on the site until the 1980s
• Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture (housed in the Avery Normal School) 
• Eastside neighborhood, with businesses like family owned Hannibal’s Kitchen (fried fish, BBQ ribs, Hoppin’ John, and other soul food) and the home/workshop museum of Philip Simmons, the celebrated blacksmith
• State House, where in 2015 Bree Newsome Bass climbed a flagpole to remove the Confederate flag.

Savannah is America's first planned city, and 22 of its 24 squares remain. The trans-Atlantic slave trade brought many African-Americans through its port, and many of them formed the unique Gullah Geechee culture of the coastal communities in Georgia and South Carolina.

The Pin Point Heritage Museum, located in an oyster and crab factory on the banks of the Moon River, shares the language, religion, foodways, and stories of this Gullah Geechee community, which occupies the largest African-American owned waterfront property on the East Coast.

Sapelo Island, a 20-minute ferry ride from the mainland, features a National Estuarine Research Reserve, the mansion once owned by North Carolina tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds, Jr., and the Hog Hammock community, permanent home to about 70 full-time residents, many of whom are descended from the enslaved laborers of Sapelo's plantations. 

The First African Baptist Church (home of North America's oldest Black congregation), the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters Museum, the King-Tisdell Cottage, the African American Family Monument, and other sites give us insight into the rich African American history of Savannah.

We'll also look forward to distinctive local culinary experiences, including at the Back in the Day Bakery. Co-owner Cheryl Day's great-great-grandmother, Hannah Queen Grubbs, was an enslaved pastry chef and the James Beard Award nominee learned to bake from her grandmother during summers spent with her in Alabama. She is a co-founder of Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice, which advocates for workers of color in the food industry.

We anticipate at least one pre-trip potluck and informational meeting to which all participants will be invited.

We also hope interest warrants at least one post-trip potluck open to all travelers.

We're glad to include anyone at a distance via video-conferencing.

Beloved Community Journey participants and other curious adults joined an 29-30 October 2023 weekend immersion experience in Charlottesville, exploring historical and contemporary aspects of race through three themes...

• enslaved communities and three early presidents
• African-Americans and the University of Virginia 
• the Robert E. Lee statue and violent 2017 Unite the Right Rally of white supremacists

...at five historic sites...

• Monticello
• Montpelier
• Highland
• University of Virginia
• Market Street Park

Learn more about Racial Myth and Memory: A Charlottesville Case Study.

Beloved Community Journey participants and other curious adults can join a Fall 2025 weekend immersion experience in Wilmington, exploring historical and contemporary aspects of race through three themes...

• Gullah Geechee and other African-Americans in coastal Carolina 
• the 1898 Wilmington race massacre
• Black Lives Matter and other racial justice efforts

...at multiple historic sites...

• Poplar Grove Plantation
• Bellamy Mansion Museum of History and Design
• 1898 Monument and Memorial Park
• University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Learn more about Racial Myth and Memory: A Wilmington Case Study.

If you'd like us to keep you updated on this or other transformational travel-learning experiences, please complete this brief notification form. 

Explore the connections between race and the rich musical history and traditions--blues, gospel, country, rock, and more--in Memphis and Mississippi.

We'll fly in and out of Memphis and use a comfortable charter bus during our stay. We'll also enjoy distinctive cuisine from local places like The Rendezvous, serving barbecue since 1948.

We'll search out live music (on Beale Street and beyond) and meet music historians and performers.

And, if we're lucky, we might be able to catch a special musical event (for example, Clarksdale's Birthplace of American Music Festival or Sunflower River Blues and Gospel Festival).

Memphis

We'll visit the legendary Sun Studio, Elvis' Graceland home, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the Memphis Rock and Soul Museum, the Blues Hall of Fame Museum, and the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel (where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated).

Mississippi 

We'll:

• experience diverse musical genres at the GRAMMY Museum in Cleveland
• follow the Blues Trail, including stops at the
  • B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola
  • Delta Blues Museum and Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art in Clarksdale
  • Gateway to the Blues Museum in Tunica
• cross the Mighty Mississippi into Arkansas for the Delta Cultural Center in Helena (home to radio's fabled King Biscuit Blues Time).

We'll also:

• learn about 14-year-old Emmett Till around Greenwood
• visit the Mound Bayou Museum in the country's oldest all-Black municipality, founded in 1887
• be inspired by the activism of the late Fannie Lou Hamer in Mound Bayou and her hometown of Ruleville.

Explore the history of Quakerism by retracing the 17th-century footsteps of George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends--and of Margaret Fell, an early supporter and later his wife--through the beautiful Lake District of northern England.

And, find adventure, learning, and reflection in community. In addition to being a nourishing experience for us individually, the Journey is a wonderful way to deepen relationships and build a stronger sense of community among F/friends and Friends institutions.

Learn more about the Quaker Journey.