Pilgrimage to Wilmington, NC
Hi All,

I'm finally there with sharing details about the upcoming Summer Trip.

FOCUS:
Join the Journey! This Summer St. John’s Youth will be gathering with youth in the Diocese of North Carolina for journey into their racial history. The Diocese of North Carolina will be offering this opportunity for rising ninth through graduating senior youth to make a journey to Wilmington, NC July 20-26, 2019. Together we’ll be exploring North Carolina’s history, the 1898 coup in Wilmington, and connect it all to race relations today. The pilgrimage to Wilmington will be the culmination of the Diocese of North Carolina’s year long study of their history, racial reconciliation and their role as Christians in the beloved community. We hope this will be a great bookend to our own exploration of California’s state racial history last Summer. Lastly, to help ease the learning we’ll have a baptismal exploration of a local water park on the last day.

DETAILS:
Dates: 7/20 - 7/26
Location: Wilmington, NC
Accommodations: St. James Church, Wilmington, NC (with Shower access)
Age: Rising 9th graders / High school
Cost: $1000, deposit of $150 due ASAP

  • This trip requires a flight and once I have the youth locked in, I'd like to buy our tickets. Ginger & Tom are the adult chaperones.

About our Trip:
  • The Diocese of North Carolina hopes to make this trip open to anyone who wants to learn more about racial politics in the South. This look at a snap shot in time will help inform current dialogue about what's going on today.


This video highlights Wilmington, North Carolina, in the years leading up to the election of 1898. At the time, Wilmington could boast of idyllic race relations between black and white citizens. Blacks, only thirty years after Emancipation, had become professionals, politicians and shop owners. While blacks prospered, some whites resented what they perceived as a new attitude among blacks of equality or even superiority to their white counterparts. However, the real issue was political power. Whites became fearful that blacks, who were in the majority, would control the city. As the statewide and local elections of 1898 approached, the Democratic Party, then the party of white supremacy, was determined to end black political power in Wilmington.

Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Adults should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their youth.

We'll be exploring what happened and how it effects us today.


FUN:
To help make the history and service learning worthwhile, we'll also be heading to the beach and to a nearby water park as a reward for diving deep into these issues.
Thank you for reading and please reply back with any and all comments,

Tom
3 YEAR PLAN:

GOAL: give the youth tools to talk about their perspective on race, how their faith informs the discussion, and what are the historical experiences of others.

PLAN: is to follow a program based on a set of trips done by the Diocese of Northern California. We start by exploring our state history on racism, then our country's history of racism, and then a significant international story on racism.

Year 1: Take a tour of racial, historical sites in California. We would start in Northern California and head to Southern California exploring sites such as the Missions, Gold rush sites, Black Panther sites, Manzinar, and then head to LA for possible trips to Home Boy industries (Tattoos on the Heart), where the Watts riots were, and more. To entice youth, I'd look to also add a beach day and possibly a trip to Disneyland. Juxtaposing the imagined happiest place on earth with the complexities of the racial history of our state.

Year 2: Take a tour of racial, historical sites in the North Carolina.

Year 3: Take a tour of South Africa, to see Nelson Mandela's experience and how it affected the discussion on apartheid.

BENEFIT: From a developmental stand point, this set of experiences would give each participant a phenomenal backdrop on which to write about how they grew in their racial understanding for a high school or college application. It could also provide several possible vignettes for them to discuss their own growth.