Racial Myth & Memory Spring 2026

We depart Durham in a comfortable charter bus for the three-hour drive to Wilmington and return the next evening.

We'll be adding specifics about special guests, additional meals, and other logistics. Please note itinerary details are subject to change.

Poplar Grove, a former peanut and sweet potato plantation, is a stop on the National Park Service’s Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which begins just north of Wilmington.

Executive Director Caroline C. Lewis will visit with us to highlight the history of the West African peoples and North Carolina Black History (including the American Revolution and the Civil War) through the lives of enslaved people at the plantation.

The Bellamy Mansion Museum of History & Design Arts, built by free and enslaved people between 1859 and 1861, is another Wilmington stop on the Gullah Geechee Culture Heritage Corridor. The site includes one of the country's handful of original, fully restored urban quarters of the enslaved open to the public.

The only successful coup d’état in American history took place in Wilmington on November 10th, 1898, when white supremacists murdered Black residents and overthrew the city’s multiracial government.

In 2016, a new historical marker commemorated the Wilmington 10, wrongly incarcerated for most of the 1970s because of their activism.

Because It's Time, a sculpture by Dare Coulter (a Raleigh native and alumna of NC State’s College of Design and Meredith College’s art program), stands on the campus of UNC-Wilmington.

These two sites offer a lens to understand the injustice of the case against the Wilmington 10 and the through lines to more recent Black Lives Matter protests.

We'll be making other brief or more involved stops. For example:

• the Giblem Lodge of the Prince Hall Masons
• the site of the Gregory Normal School, which educated African-Americans until 1921
• the site of the Williston School, whose alumni include Tuskegee Institute architect Robert Taylor, tennis pioneer Althea Gibson, Greensboro Four activist Joseph McNeil, and Harlem Globetrotter star Meadowlark Lemon
• the Italianate John E. Taylor House by a prominent local African-American builder
• Pine Forest Cemetery, final resting place of prominent local Black citizens and victims of the 1898 Race Massacre.

We'll enjoy delicious meals at local eateries, including family-owned Casey's Buffet Barbecue and Home Cooking.

We'll also have time for reflection and sharing.

We anticipate 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.

Anthony L. Clay is excited to be the lead historian and guide for the Racial Myth & Memory experience and other racial justice trips.

Since 2009, he's served Carolina Friends School as its first Director of Advancement and as its first Director of Extended Learning (Summer Programs, Extended Day, after-school classes and music lessons, and travel and other enrichment opportunities). He's now founding head of the School's Institute for Teaching and Learning.

Anthony earned baccalaureate degrees magna cum laude in History and in International Relations and an Asian Studies Certificate at American University and then completed an M.A. in History and received Phi Beta Kappa honors at Emory University. 

Anthony has worked as a teacher (in subjects including U.S. history, government and politics, debate, and economics), college counselor, and advisor at Holland Hall School (Tulsa, Oklahoma), Raleigh Charter High School, Durham Academy, and CFS (2002-2005).

Much of his research and teaching has focused on the intersection of politics and culture--especially race--since World War II. An Arkansas native, he helped create and lead civil rights bus tours of the South for adults and high school students and in 2016, 2019, and 2023 Durham civil rights programs for CFS staff. Each May he spends a week helping guide CFS Middle Schoolers on a civil rights experience in Alabama and Georgia and facilitated 2023, 2024, and 2025 Beloved Community Journeys for educators and other adults.

Anthony has served in leadership and advisory roles for various professional organizations and non-profits, including Student U, Junior Leadership Durham, Youth Leadership Tulsa, Youth Services of Tulsa, GLSEN, Habitat for Humanity, and the Southern and National Associations for College Admission Counseling.

A CFS alum parent of two, he helps facilitate the Quaker Journey to northern England, offered in 2018, 2024, and 2026. 

Here's what participants have had to say about our past racial justice trips....

I feel transformed. Not sure where I'm going to land after this experience, but know I won't be the same person as I was before the trip.

What was most meaningful for me were the visceral experiences of being in these places, standing on the ground where they happened, understanding on a more encompassing level the magnitude and depth of our racial history and the unhealed individual and national wounds we can't continue to ignore.

I did some grieving and alot of gratitude practices as I moved through each site. I found hope in meeting and hearing from people who lived through these times and also ones who are currently and continually working on the goal of racial equity.

Participants shared personal stories of overcoming hardships and discrimination, of meeting hatred with love, and provided real time models that are so inspiring! I felt trusted with their tender experiences. I felt challenged to explore myself and new ideas and I felt safe to say my truths. Thank you one and all.

The past came alive for us, tears fell, and lives changed. I gained incredible knowledge…and made a commitment to work for justice, equality, and human rights in whatever ways I can. Everyone should take advantage of this transforming journey. 

This is a powerful trip that should be experienced by as many people as possible. 

I now feel more authentic in my effort to join with others to do what my heart always wished to do. What a gift.

Tour tuition, when finalized, will include:

• transportation via air-conditioned charter coach
• one night of double-occupancy hotel lodging*
• one breakfast, one lunch, and one dinner
• all admission fees and guest speaker honoraria
• on-board live and multi-media programming
• resource materials about tour destinations, civil rights history, contemporary social justice issues, and other relevant topics
• the services of an experienced tour leader/historian

* individual rooms will be available for a supplement

The tuition won't include:

• incidental purchases
• room service and other hotel incidentals
• alcohol with a meal
• trip/travel insurance

A deposit will be due at the time of application and refundable if we can fill your space.

We'd love to have you and a diverse group of participants "get on board" for this powerful personal and community journey. We'll have some funds available to help Carolina Friends staff members participate and, thanks to trip revenues, a very modest amount for educators in charter and traditional public schools as well as independent schools who couldn't afford to go without partial support.

The application will open via a Google form as soon as we're able to confirm dates and other details.

We hope you'll consider other transformational travel-learning opportunities--for example, the March, six-day Coastal Journey to Charleston and Savannah.

If you'd like us to keep you updated on this or other study trips (including the opening of registration), please complete this brief notification form.

If you have questions about mobility demands or other tour particulars, please contact Anthony L. Clay at ExtendedLearning@cfsnc.org.

Experience civil rights history in Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery, Tuskegee, and Atlanta; explore contemporary issues of race in our country; and meet change-agents working to make a difference.

Houston Brown, a pioneering lawyer and now-retired judge, joins us on our bus to explore Birmingham and its history. We'll stop at the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four little girls died in a September 1963 white supremacist bombing; walk through Kelly Ingram Park; and explore the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. 

In Selma, we see Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, a center of community organizing, and cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, retracing the Bloody Sunday march of 1965. 

In Montgomery we explore the:

• Maya Lin-designed Civil Rights Memorial of the Southern Poverty Law Center;
• Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church;
• Mothers of Gynecology sculpture;
• Legacy Museum, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park.

We stop at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site and Tuskegee University. 

In Atlanta, we:

• see the Historic Ebenezer sanctuary (site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral), the tomb of Dr. and Mrs. King, and the museum at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site;
• visit the Madam C.J. Walker's Beauty Shoppe and WERD, lifting up the stories of America's first female self-made millionaire and of the country's first Black-owned and operated radio station (1949);
• join worship at  Ebenezer Baptist Church, pastored for 44 years by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and now led by the Reverend Dr. Raphael G. Warnock.

Learn more about the Beloved Community Journey.

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

Charleston

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 visit around the International African American Museum (opening in 2023) and other important sites, from the McLeod Plantation Historic Site to the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, housed in the Avery Normal School.

Savannah

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. She is a co-founder of Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice, which advocates for workers of color in the food industry.

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.

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.