UMW is inviting community members to caravan along with students on its “Social Justice Trip: Freedom Rides Tour,” which will take place Oct. 12 through 15.

Will you get on the bus?

The University of Mary Washington is inviting members of the Fredericksburg community to join students on a trip of a lifetime. The Freedom Rides Tour – set to take place Saturday, Oct. 12, through Tuesday, Oct. 15 – traces the route of the history-changing 1960s bus rides across the American South. The social justice experience celebrates Dr. James L. Farmer Jr., the late civil rights icon and Mary Washington history professor, and his signature movement to enforce the desegregation of interstate travel.

Coordinated by UMW’s James Farmer Multicultural Center (JFMC) and the office of the Vice-President for Equity and Access, the tour is being coordinated in conjunction with UMW’s yearlong 2020 celebration of the 100th anniversary of Dr. Farmer’s birth.

A community bus, caravanning with a student bus, will stop at some of the same places the Freedom Riders stopped as they spoke with other activists at North Carolina’s Bennett College, strategized next steps in Georgia, or sought a safe place to sleep for the night. The tour includes visits to the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in North Carolina, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama, and the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and the Atlanta University Center, both in Georgia. Read more.

The University of Mary Washington is a premier, selective public liberal arts and sciences university in Virginia, highly respected for its commitment to academic excellence, strong undergraduate liberal arts and sciences program, and dedication to life-long learning. The university, with a total enrollment of more than 5,000, features colleges of business, education and arts and sciences, and three campuses, including a residential campus in Fredericksburg, Va., a second one in nearby Stafford and a third in Dahlgren, Va., which serves as a center of development of educational and research partnerships between the Navy, higher education institutions and the region’s employers.