The Clearwater High School Civil Rights Tour started Thursday in the birthplace of the movement’s giant. The first stop of the five-day trip through the south started in Atlanta, Ga., the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The 22 students toured Dr. King’s birth home located at 501 Auburn Ave. and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King attended as a child and eventually co-pastored with his father. They also visited the King Center and the Reflecting Pool that surrounds the tombs of Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King.

There was lunch at the Auburn Market and a guided tour through the Herndon Home Museum.  Built between 1908 and 1910, the home was where Alonzo Franklin Herndon lived.  Herndon was Atlanta’s first black millionaire. Born a slave, he became a barber, a real estate mogul and founded Atlanta Mutual Life Insurance Company. His wife Adrienne McNeil Herndon designed the high ceiling, two story home.

The afternoon was spent at the National Center of Civil and Human Rights. Students sat at a lunch counter, with headphones on, that simulated the lunch counter experience for black protesters during the sixties. They watched short movies that chronicled the Civil Rights movement as it happened at the time.

The day ended with dinner provided by Paschal’s Restaurant which was where Dr. King and many other Civil Rights leaders dined and held strategy meetings. After dinner, the students held a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Youngblood, the grandparents of one of the students on the trip. The Youngbloods live in Atlanta and lived during the Civil Rights era. They also heard from Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an Atlanta historian and the author of the book “Atlanta and the Civil Rights Movement: 1944-1968.” The students read the book before starting the trip.

The students are participating in the Clearwater High Civil Rights Tour, a project-based personalized learning opportunity. The is the third year for the tour. Students have researched and are participating in experiences that connects them to the Civil Rights movement in the United States.

The culmination of this project is an in-depth tour of sites with historical significance for the Civil Rights Movement. Other cities visited during the tour are Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, Ala. and Memphis, Tenn. The students are meeting key stakeholders, active participants and spectators of these important events.

All learning is student-driven. On their return from the tour, the student participants, also known as CHS Freedom Ambassadors, will lead a project-based learning experience for other Pinellas County Schools school groups. Clearwater High School is part of the first group of schools in the district to implement Personalized Learning through the district’s Pinellas Innovates plan.