Local Students Heading To Selma Over Spring Break To Mark 50th Anniversary Of March
By Kim Glovas
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It's Spring Break at Villanova University, but some students will not be vacationing. They're heading to Selma, Alabama to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march.
Teresa Nance, assistant vice president of Multicultural Affairs, is one of those spearheading the trip. She says college students today really have no reference point on the Civil Rights Movement, and this provides an opportunity.
"We are at this incredible juncture of time, of looking back and looking forward and realizing that we have to use the lessons from the past in order to really understand and move forward for today."
Junior Baratha Tan, a mechanical engineering major, is ready to learn.
"I don't really know much about the civil rights movement with the exception of the little bits here and there from history back in middle school and high school."
On the trip, students will be talking to senior citizens who lived through the upheaval in Selma in 1965.