The music of the era started the fourth day of the Civil Rights Tour. At the Stax Museum in Memphis, Tenn., the students watched a short film about the 1959 start of Stax Records and the artists who produced music on the southern label. Those artists included Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers. Students had the opportunity to view clothing, a recording studio and to individually listen to music that was produced and recorded during the time.

The hotel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was killed on April, 4 1968 was the next experience for the students. It’s the 50^th year of Dr. King’s assassination and the students had the opportunity to view room 306 of the Lorraine Motel. That’s the room where Dr. King was staying the day he was killed. The students viewed the balcony and the bathroom across the street where the fatal shot was triggered. The Lorraine Motel is a part of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel and has a variety of exhibits about the African American experience in America.

There are 22 students participating in the Clearwater High Civil Rights Tour, a project-based personalized learning opportunity. During the school year, the students researched experiences that connects them to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Tours of sites with historical significance to the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta Ga., Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, Ala., and Memphis, Tenn. was the culminating project. Clearwater High students met key stakeholders, active participants and spectators of these important events. This is the third year for the tour.

One of the first students to integrate the Memphis City Schools, Dwania Kyles, spoke with Clearwater High students at the Withers Collection Museum & Gallery located on Memphis’ Beale Street. The museum is named after and houses the photos of Ernest C. Withers, a black photographer who extensively photographed the Civil Rights Movement in the south.

Dwania Kyles was a member of what is known as the Memphis 13, the number of students who integrated the school system in 1961. She was the only student to remain and to graduate from the school that they started in first grade. Her father was Samuel Billy Kyles, a civil rights activist who was on the balcony with Dr. King when he was killed. Dr. King was to have dinner with the Kyles family the evening he was killed.

 In great detail, Dwania Kyles detailed her experience. She told the students that the most important thing for them to do is to love themselves, not matter what. “If you don’t’ love yourself, you can’t love anyone else,” she said.At the end of each day during the tour, the Clearwater High students shared with one another what they learned and what impacted them the most. On the last night, they listed the common themes from their Civil Rights Tour. Those common themes were:

• Lives were taken, not given.
• The power of forgiveness.
• Everyone wants and should be treated as a human being.
• Never give up.