In September of 2024, the Alliance for Early Success offered state grantee organizations the chance to take a shared journey designed to build their team’s racial equity muscle and catalyze new ways of working back home. Close to 200 advocates gathered in Montgomery, Alabama, for the Alabama Experience, an intensive three days that incorporated the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Sites and many of the city’s other powerful spaces that explore our nation’s history of racial injustice and movement toward civil rights.
“Antiracism is a core value of the Alliance, and a foundational element of our theory of change,” says Helene Stebbins, the Alliance’s Executive Director. “The Alabama Experience is another powerful support that we hope catalyzes new equity-centered practices in agenda setting, coalition work, and organizational development, because we know this is essential for transforming early childhood policies and practices.”
Grantees had the opportunity to visit numerous sites, including the Dr. Richard Harris House, the Freedom Rides Museum, the Rosa Parks Museum, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. Institute at the Federal Courthouse. And they also had an entire day to explore the powerful museum, memorial, and sculpture garden created by the Equal Justice Initiative.
But the goal of the Alabama Experience was to serve as a catalyst for change, so there was extensive time for reflection, discussion, and connecting insights to participants’ work as individuals, organizational leaders, and early childhood advocates. Much of this work was done in racial identity caucuses, intentionally designed to provide participants the space to reflect deeply and authentically among peers with shared racial backgrounds. Facilitated by and team of local consultants and guided by racial equity experts at CounterPart Consulting and OpenSource Leadership Strategies, the caucuses proved to be a candid space for participants, inviting curiosity and self-awareness as foundational steps toward equity and considerations for their work ahead.
Grantees also experienced an evening of local music and food at Michelle Browder’s More Up campus, a sprawling art park built around her Mothers of Gynecology sculpture, which honors the enslaved women who were experimented upon without consent in order to advance modern surgical practices in gynecology.
“We all know the story of the civil rights movement…but now we have a deeper understanding of the struggle,” one attendee reflected at the end of the event. “The experience gave us time to sit in the discomfort of what we experienced, and it allowed the space to learn and hear from others. The experience challenged us to find opportunities back home where we can pave or widen the road for equitable policies and systems.”
Click the button to access some of the shared resources form the Alabama Experience and to read some participant reflections.
