Please be a part of our journey!

Dear Evanston,

Please be a part of our journey!

This Friday at 6:15 p.m., two buses filled with 100 Evanston residents will depart from ETHS' parking lot headed to Montgomery, Alabama on our "Uncomfortable Journey" to visit the Legacy Museum: from Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

It's been a journey in and of itself to reach this moment, with lots of preparation both logistically and emotionally for all of us.

I know that we're all looking forward to learning and growing together, to confronting and grappling with our country's racist past -- and its legacy of injustice -- and having difficult and necessary conversations across race, age, gender, and socioeconomic background.

We are a diverse group!

More than 20 folks remain on our waitlist, and there are many others who wanted to join us, but for a variety of reasons were unable to travel with us.

So, we invite everyone in our community who isn't able to join our journey but would like to be part of it to show up at ETHS (door 2) at 5 p.m. and send us off as our participants arrive and board the buses.

We're thrilled that members of Evanston Sings will be there to set the tone!

We hope to see you on Friday evening!

Thank you to Pastor Michael Nabors and the Evanston/North Shore Branch NAACP for speaking to us last Sunday about your experience traveling to the Goree Islands off Senegal where wooden ships sailed across the Atlantic with human beings chained in their holds;

To Gilo Kwesi Cornell Logan, Miah Logan, Chaaze Roberts, Monique Parsons, the incredible drummers and percussionists who opened our pre-trip meetings so powerfully with a libation ceremony;

To Dino Robinson of Shorefront Legacy Center who taught us some of the history of Evanston's Black community and the Great Migration;

To Eileen Hogan Heineman, Pamela Cytrynbaum, Gilo Kwesi Cornell Logan, and Corrie Wallace for sharing your wisdom, kindness, and guidance about how to productively discuss and confront difficult subjects while recognizing (for some of us) our white privilege and learning to listen more and talk less.

To Seth Simmons of Fresh Prints of Evanston for our outstanding logo and our commemorative t-shirts.

To the Evanston Community Foundation, Evanston Cradle to Career, and NAACP North Shore Evanston for your partnership.

To Shannon Sudduth and Noir d'Ebene Chocolat et Patisserie for the outstanding food you provided at our pre-journey meetings that fed our stomachs and our souls.

To our eternally patient travel agent Felicia Brandon (Felicia Lish Blackburn) and Epiphany Travel Agency: we cannot wait to meet you in person on Saturday morning--thank you for coming from Atlanta to Montgomery to be with our group! I know it will also be a reunion with some of your Evanston friends!

To Kimberly Holmes-Ross, Jennifer Moran, Kathleen Johnson Long, and Evan Bernstein Finamore for friendship and cameraderie.

And to all of our participants for taking this journey with us!