Journey to Justice’s Alternative Spring Break offers University of Evansville students an immersive, credit-bearing opportunity to engage the history and ongoing realities of race in America. Designed for students seeking a meaningful spring break experience, the program combines civil rights education, service learning, and structured reflection.

Students may participate for course credit through RES 150: Civil Rights Movement or as a co-curricular Alternative Spring Break experience. While the program shares core elements with the summer Journey to Justice program, the spring break experience includes service learning in Marion, Alabama, along with designated free evenings that allow students space to reflect, connect, and recharge.

What Makes Alternative Spring Break Distinct

Alternative Spring Break is intentionally structured as both an academic and experiential program. Students move between historic sites, community engagement, and guided discussion, encountering civil rights history not as distant past but as a living framework for understanding justice today.

The experience emphasizes:

• Place-based civil rights education across the U.S. South
• Service learning in Marion, Alabama, connecting history to present-day community needs
• Faculty-led reflection and discussion grounded in historical scholarship
• Time for informal conversation, relationship-building, and processing outside of structured programming

Learning From People and Places

Students learn directly from historians, community leaders, artists, and eyewitnesses — and from the places themselves.

Student Voice

“I’ll never forget walking in the footsteps of the activists who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma or hearing from some of the eyewitnesses to the event. Their stories were painful but inspiring. When I returned home, I joined the NAACP, became a mentor for Journey to Justice, and started a multicultural support group for nurses at the hospital where I work.” Angelo Hall

Students often describe Alternative Spring Break as a turning point, a moment when learning becomes responsibility and reflection becomes action.

A Collaborative University Effort

Journey to Justice Alternative Spring Break is a joint initiative of the Department of History, Politics, and Social Change and the Office of Student Engagement, reflecting the University of Evansville’s commitment to academically grounded, ethically responsible civic learning.

Together, these partners support students as they engage difficult histories with care, curiosity, and accountability both inside and outside the classroom.

Journey to Justice reflects the University of Evansville’s mission by empowering students to think critically, act bravely, serve responsibly, and live meaningfully in a changing world.