Southern Pilgrimage 2025

Overview

Dear Travelers!

The Southern Pilgrimage is a joint program of Monticello’s Getting Word African American Oral History Project and The Equity Center at the University of Virginia. A renewal of the annual Charlottesville Civil Rights Tour hosted by The Memory Project at UVA, the Southern Pilgrimage is a week-long, immersive learning experience that guides participants through the Deep South. The trip will depart from Charlottesville on June 9, 2025 and return on June 15, 2025.

Our aim in this week-long pilgrimage is to grapple with a version of a question first put forth by the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project: Monuments, memorials, and museums are how a country tells and teaches its story. What story does the commemorative landscape of the South tell? Who are we instructed to honor and uplift, and who do we not see in these potent symbols? Does the civic landscape show an accurate picture of our nation, or propagate a woefully incomplete story?  

Over the course of seven days, this cohort will undertake a broad survey of the South’s historic landscape, exploring sites of history from the colonial era through the Civil Rights Movement across Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Click HERE to view the trip website. **Please note the final itinerary will be provide on-trip.

SOLO ROOM UPGRADE: There are a limited number of solo rooms available. Please indicate in the TASK section, once registered, if you would like to be considered. Note that there is a $499 fee first for a solo rooms on a first come first serve basis, until rooms are filled. You will be placed on a waitlist if moore rooms open up, but the fee may be adjust at that point.

Flight Details: A group flight will be departing June 9th from Richmond Airport, returning to Richmond Airport on June 15th. Arrangements outside of the group flight must be handled and paid for on your own. Info will be delivered closed to departure. Your flight time information will be posted in this portal in April. Please check back for more information.

Itinerary is subject to change.