Park and Education Center
Central to achieving our mission is the development of
Foot Soldiers Park and Education Center.
A place of reverence, learning, activism and joy, it will encompass some of the historic sites we seek to preserve and create new spaces for community engagement and collective action. The Foot Soldiers campus will provide economic opportunity for the residents of Selma, creating jobs and increasing tourism to the city. It will also remedy the eradication of community spaces that has occurred over time, offering an opportunity for community building and renewal.
The campus will be centrally located just steps from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, historic Brown Chapel, the National Parks Service Interpretive Center and Riverfront Park. It is an ideal location to bring more visitors and tourists into the heart of Selma, while still remaining grounded in the community of residents we intend to honor and serve.
Download a map of the 1965 Selma Freedom Trail and other historic sites of the Civil Rights Movement, including sites to be preserved on the Foot Soldiers campus here.
Education Center
Featuring a light-filled multi-purpose classroom and gathering spaces and a 50-person tiered movie theater/performance facility, our state of the art Education Center will be a dynamic venue for film screenings, exhibitions, symposia, workshops and cultural and literary events—a hub for social justice learning and activism. Our facilities will become a focal point for social justice learning and activism that will draw leading scholars, educators, artists and activists and educate and inspire school children and other visitors to Selma, encouraging them to become today’s foot soldiers.
foot soldiers trail
At the heart of our campus is Foot Soldiers’ Trail, an interactive pathway that offers visitors a glimpse into the experiences of the young Foot Soldiers as they began their pilgrimage from Selma to Montgomery. The trail will be punctuated by memorials and educational exhibits and will offer visitors and community members an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of the activists of 1965, learn from their achievements, and to find their own place in the movement for voting rights and equal justice.
john R. lewis memorial playground
“Generations from now, when parents teach their children what is meant by courage, the story of John Lewis will come to mind—an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time; whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now.” - President Barack Obama, 2011
This joyful and expansive play space will be designed to honor late Congressman Lewis who even as a young boy believed he had the power to be a leader whose words “stirred hearts to change, minds to think, and bodies to take action.” Dynamic and thoughtfully designed to be inclusive for children of all ages and abilities, thanks to our partnership with non-profit Harper’s Playground, a national leader in this field, the play space will give underserved children in Selma a safe, engaging place to be themselves.
foot soldiers park Museum
Housed within a salvaged and preserved original George Washington Carver Homes residential building, the Foot Soldiers Park Museum will tell the story of Selma and its activists using first person accounts, historical artifacts and interactive exhibits. Located just steps from the historic Brown Chapel, the Carver Homes were a focal point for the Civil Rights activism of the 1960s. Residents used their kitchen tables as organizing hubs and tenants hosted out of town marchers who weren’t welcome at local hotels on their couches and floors alongside their own family members. On March 7, 1965, marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams gathered outside the Carver Homes before the historic march that would become known as Bloody Sunday.
The museum will present some of the rooms as they might have looked in 1965. It is being developed together with our partners at Harvard Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and Auburn University.
other Campus amenities
Foot Soldiers Park will also include much-needed amenities and resources for the residents of Selma, including health and wellness facilities, classroom spaces for early childhood through adult education programs, a community teaching garden with plots for families and educators, playing fields and basketball courts with bleachers for community use and facilitated programs, and walking paths lined by native plantings.