Courtesy of MSU Athletics:
East Lansing, Mich. - For the second-straight year, Michigan State Athletics will send four student-athletes to the Big Ten Conference’s “Big Life Series: Selma to Montgomery” from July 14-16.
This year, the representatives of student-athletes and athletics staff from all 14 Big Ten schools will be joined by participants from a handful of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), including Florida A&M, Howard and North Carolina A&T. Student-athletes from future Big Ten schools USC and UCLA will also join the trip.
Sophomore football player Dillon Tatum will join track & field graduate student Nala Barlow, junior volleyball player Aliyah Moore and sophomore volleyball player Jayhlin Swain as the student-athletes representing Michigan State.
Last season, the Spartans were represented by head football coach Mel Tucker and Chief Diversity, Equity; Inclusion Officer Dr. Ashley Baker, along with student-athletes Brooke Bogan (women’s track and field), Spencer Brown (football), Maliq Carr (football) and Tre Mosley (football).
The “Big Life Series” is a cornerstone initiative led by the Big Ten Equality Coalition and highlights the conference’s ongoing commitment to examine and search for answers to the racial, social, religious and cultural challenges faced by our country. The focal point of the Alabama experience will be a march across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, site of the 1965 Bloody Sunday attack.
The excursion begins on Friday, July 14 with visits to several local civil rights museums, including the Rosa Parks Museum, Freedom Riders Museum and Montgomery Interpretive Center, located on the campus of Alabama State. Later in the evening, keynote speaker and civil rights activist Sheyann Webb-Christburg, known as the “smallest freedom fighter” will address the participants. The evening will conclude with an empowering and educational panel featuring young civil rights leaders representing the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU.
The event continues Saturday, July 15 with a bus trip to Selma for a community service project. Attendees will pack back-to-school backpacks with school supplies and balls. This will be followed by a visit to the First Baptist Church, the site where the Dallas County Voters League mobilized hundreds of students to begin their landmark civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Attendees will hear from several local speakers including Mayor James Perkins Jr., Lynda Blackmon Lowery and Warren Billy Young. Participants in this year’s “Big Life Series” will then make their own walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge before the group returns to Montgomery. Community activist Doris Dozier Crenshaw will address the group at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. The final event on Saturday will be a visit to the award-winning Legacy Museum, which provides an immersive experience from enslavement to mass incarceration.
The 2023 “Big Life Series: Selma to Montgomery” trip is sponsored in part by the Capital One Orange Bowl and the Tournament of Roses Association and Rose Bowl Game.
