Virtual Destination Tours: North America

Virtual Civil Rights: Memphis and Nashville Experience

Immerse your students into the rich and complex civil rights history within two iconic Southern Cities: Memphis and Nashville. Understand the impact of the Mississippi River upon economics and enslaved people, and take a ride along a Mississippi Riverboat. Channel the fears and hopes of enslaved people seeking a way of escape when we visit the Slave Haven Museum. Learn how the sanitation workers strike parallels today’s protest movement and activism and wander into Clayborn Temple. Explore the impact of college students affecting change at lunch counter sit-ins. Discover art in Nashville that resonates with the energy and sacrifice of civil rights. Visit the National Civil Rights Museum and put all that history together.

Sites visited:

• Slave Haven Museum
• Clayborn Temple
• Woolworth on 5th
• National Civil Rights Museum and the Lorraine Motel
• Stax Records and WDIA
• Beale Street
• Witness Walls

Topics Discussed:

• Slave trade on the Mississippi
• Sanitation Workers Strike (I Am A Man)
• Dr. Martin Luther King’s last speech and assassination
• Lunch counter sit-ins and the student movement
• Music of the Black south

Take the journey through Tennessee Civil Rights history with us!

Virtual New Orleans Experience (BLM Series)

Come and chill with us in the Big Easy – one of our most popular tours! On our virtual tour of New Orleans, we will walk the streets of the French Quarter and check out some of its famous busker activities. You’ll start feeling your stomach grumble as we discuss the city’s famous cuisine, with dishes like crawfish, gumbo, po’ boys, and of course, beignets. Learn what wards are and how New Orleanians identify themselves based on what part of the city they’re from. Along the way, we’ll hit a second line and learn about this famous New Orleans tradition. NOLA is famous for its music, and you’ll learn about famous jazz artists like Louis Armstrong and also some hip-hop legends from the city. We check out some of the colleges in the area so students will have an idea of the options they have in this incredible city. Of course, no tour of New Orleans would be complete without talking about Mardi Gras – we take you out of the French Quarter and learn about how the city’s natives celebrate.

Tour highlights include:

• French Quarter
• New Orleans Cuisine
• Hurricane Katrina
• Music of the Big Easy
• Wards
• NOLA festivals
• Mardi Gras
• Southern University, Xavier, Dillard, and Loyola.
• Studio BE art studio

Virtual Black History Museums Experience

Let’s take a virtual trip with us around the southeast US and tour 4 important museums dedicated to black history.

First, we will visit one of Nashville’s newest museums: the National Museum of African American Music, the only museum dedicated to preserving and celebrating the many music genres created, influenced, and inspired by African Americans. Then we head down to Montgomery, Alabama, and the National Memorial of Peace and Justice. According to its website, this is “the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching.” Next, it’s off to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis where we trace Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final steps and learn about some important movements in Civil Rights history. Finally, we finish our educational journey at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, DC. There, we take a walk through time, starting with slavery and ending with great accomplishments made by African Americans in many different fields.

Tour highlights:

• National Museum of African American Music – Nashville, TN
• National Memorial of Peace and Justice – Montgomery, AL
• National Civil Rights Museum – Memphis, TN
• National Museum of African American History & Culture – Washington, DC