[Episcopal News Service] As part of its ongoing commitment to racial reconciliation and education work, 46 people from the Charleston-based Diocese of South Carolina last week embarked on a racial justice pilgrimage to civil rights landmarks, museums and memorials in Atlanta, Georgia, and Montgomery and Selma, Alabama.

Downtown Charleston’s three historically Black parishes – Calvary Episcopal Church, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church and St. Stephen’s Church, known collectively as the Three Churches United – led the March 6-10 diocesan pilgrimage, which commemorated the 60th anniversary of the three 54-mile Selma to Montgomery marches organized by civil rights activists to demand that voting rights be granted to Black Americans.

“These activists knew in the recesses of their hearts and their souls that what they were doing was right, and the way that they were being treated was wrong, especially with the right to vote,” the Rev. Ricardo Bailey, Calvary’s rector, told Episcopal News Service. “The powers that be at the time knew that if voting were accessible to Black folk, then the whole mindset of Jim Crow and racism and segregation were imminently going to be threatened.”

The first march, which took place on March 7, 1965, is known today as “Bloody Sunday” because Alabama state troopers assaulted more than 600 nonviolent civil rights marchers, led by John Lewis, as they were crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Two days later, Martin Luther King Jr. led 2,500 marchers over the bridge and said a brief prayer before turning everyone around because of a court order preventing them from making the full march. Later that night, three white Unitarian Universalist ministers who were in town for the march were attacked by Ku Klux Klan members, killing the Rev. James Reeb. On March 21, nearly 8,000 people gathered at the historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma to march to Montgomery after U.S. district judge Frank Minis Johnson ruled in favor of their right to protest. The final march concluded on March 25 with 25,000 people gathering on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol, where King delivered his “How Long, Not Long” speech. The marches led to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“What many people fail to realize is that the crux of the Civil Rights Movement – with the loss of lives, the marches, the violence, all of it – really existed around the whole aspect of the right to vote,” Bailey said. “When you’re able to vote, you’re able to vote for people who you entrust with governance over you … You are able to vote people into office who can help to enact, as well as legislate, just laws.”

The Rev. Laura Rezac, executive director of Camp St. Christopher in Seabrook Island, with support from the Three Churches United and South Carolina Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, organized the diocesan pilgrimage, which began in Atlanta at the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center of Nonviolent Social Change. From there, the pilgrims – most of whom were parishioners of the Three Churches United – drove together to Montgomery to visit the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, informally known as the National Lynching Memorial, and the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park.

“The itinerary and the daily devotions selected for prayer and reflection while on the pilgrimage – everything was chosen with purpose and intention,” Rezac told ENS. “How people choose to act on the experiences they had moving forward in the weeks and months to come will indicate the program’s success. I believe that this group of people will listen to how the Holy Spirit is telling them to use that work in our context here in Charleston.”

On March 9, before joining thousands of other people who were also in town to commemorate the Selma to Montgomery marches and Bloody Sunday, the South Carolina pilgrims gathered at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church to listen to Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and founder and executive director of the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, preach. The Equal Justice Initiative provides legal representation to incarcerated people who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, low-income people and people who may have been denied a fair trial. It also founded the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park.

“He reminded us that it’s kind of become a theme that grace and mercy seem to have been put on trial recently by many of our politicians and judges, and we the church need to do more to follow our scriptural mandate and act justly in love and mercy and walk humbly with God,” the Rev. Michael Shaffer, interim rector of St. Mark’s, told ENS. “Hearing that before going outside to walk across the [Edmund Pettus] Bridge, I felt like we were living into our calling as disciples of Christ.”

Michigan Bishop Bonnie Perry, left, South Carolina Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, center, an a lay leader in the Diocese of Michigan, right, visited historic sites in Alabama as part of their respective diocesan civil rights pilgrimages commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches that led to the adoption of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. They joined thousands of other people to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where the marches started. March 9, 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Ruth Woodliff-Stanley

While marching across the 1,248-foot bridge, the South Carolina pilgrims unexpectedly ran into the 56 pilgrims from the Detroit-based Diocese of Michigan. Bishop Bonnie Perry was part of the group.

Woodliff-Stanley, a descendant of slaveholders who lived in Charleston, told ENS that she thought about the courage of people who didn’t let Bloody Sunday stop them from committing their fight for Black Americans’ right to vote. She also said that the interactive Legacy Museum left a large impression on her, making her reflect on U.S. history.

“This country sits on top the displacement of Indigenous people, and on top of that is the transatlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trade, and all the wealth and prosperity that was made started with the watery graves of the enslaved Africans [during the Middle Passage],” Woodliff-Stanley said. “Now, there’s an attempt to erase our story of race in America from school curricula … it makes really clear the work before us now, in both reading and seeing these historic sites in person.”

Throughout the pilgrimage, the group – which included a mix of Black and white pilgrims, including two teenagers – engaged in prayer, reflection and discussion. The Rev. Adam Shoemaker, rector of St. Stephen’s, told ENS that the timing is “very poignant” considering President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion.

“I believe this group, collectively, is in agreement that there’s a lot going on in the world right now, and to be in Selma to mark this anniversary at this particular time … reminded us that we need to keep pushing forward,” he said.

Established in 1663, South Carolina was the first British North American colony founded as a “slave society.” Charleston was the largest slave trading and auction city in the United States with as many as 260,000 West Africans sent there between 1670 and 1808. Most – about 40% – disembarked in Gadsden’s Wharf, the largest single point of entry for enslaved Africans, which is now the site of the International African American Museum. By the 18th century, the city had the highest number of enslaved people in the country. The Three Churches United are located within two miles of the museum.

In 2020, the Diocese of South Carolina recommitted to its racial reconciliation work when it formed the Diocesan Racial Justice and Reconciliation Commission to increase the awareness of racial history and to promote and enable racial justice and reconciliation throughout the diocese and in wider communities. Part of those racial reconciliation efforts includes maintaining and sustaining the diocese’s historically Black churches and working to hire additional Black clergy.

The commission, which consists of clergy and laity, regularly hosts educational events throughout the diocese, including at Voorhees University in Denmark, one of two historically Black colleges with Episcopal roots. The commission also facilitates the diocese’s Sacred Ground circles. Sacred Ground is the church’s antiracism curriculum that was initially developed as a resource to learn about the history of racism in the United States and how that racism continues to manifest itself today in American social interactions and institutions, including the church.

The commission additionally hosts learning days to teach the history of the Diocese of South Carolina, including its complicity in slavery. The next learning day, taking place on March 29 at the Church of the Epiphany in Summerville, will highlight the history of the church and its benefactor, Catherine B. “Kitty” Smith Springs, a prominent businesswoman of color.

Even though the pilgrimage highlighted traumatic points in U.S. history, Bailey said there also was “a lot of joy” for him at times.

“Seeing some of our Black elders and how much it meant for them to be there with this group, I was really moved to tears more than once on this pilgrimage,” he said. “To witness history through their eyes … we’ve got to be courageous and continue working together.”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.