By Rachel Minske and Ellen Mattila  The re-election of President Barack Obama in 2012 brought celebration, but in many parts of the country it also brought controversy. The election results spurred a flare-up of online secession petitions, especially in the South. During the January 2013 Civil Rights Pilgrimage, Inside Eau Claire reporters Rachel Minske and Ellen [...]

By Breann Schossow [Audio clip: view full post to listen] According to a 2011 study looking at state curricula, Wisconsin, along with 34 other states, earned an F in its teachings of the Civil Rights Movement. The study, Teaching the Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education 2011, compared state requirements to what civil rights [...]

By Emily Gresbrink When University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire journalism students Amanda Tyler and Breann Schossow sat in pews interviewing a member of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma, Ala., a man came up behind them and sat down. He slowly began to talk about his experiences during the Civil Rights era and told them how in [...]

Standing on a patch of concrete in the George Washington Carver housing projects in Selma, Ala., civil rights foot soldier Joanne Bland held a pebble in her palm. The pebble, a crumbling piece of the historic ground she stood on, signified the meeting place of nearly 600 men, women, and children before they began their [...]

Though slavery in the United States was officially ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December of 1865, scholars and researchers around the world continue to try to understand the experience.  University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Students on the 2012 Civil Rights Pilgrimage got a small glimpse of what slavery was like Tuesday morning in Selma, Ala. [...]

By Emily Gresbrink Thursday, January 12, 2012 In December 1955, a bus driver told Rosa Parks to move to the back as the bus filled with white Montgomery citizens – she refused politely and calmly. She ended up in jail. Nearly overnight, Parks, a seamstress and part-time secretary for the NAACP, became the “the mother of [...]