English Avenue School: 627 English Avenue NW, Atlanta GA 30318

The following paper will discuss an exhibition hosted at the Smithsonian National American History Museum through the ACCelerate Festival featuring the voyage of the Selma-Montgomery march of 1965, the cities, buildings, and local people that influenced the march that brought about the Voting Rights Act signed by Lyndon B Johnson. The exhibit was prepared by an independent studies class of undergraduate and graduate students from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Spring of 2022. Though the heroes most associated with the march are wellknown courageous national leaders, the exhibit focused on local community organizers whose sacrifices lasted beyond March of that year. And though the story concentrates around a bridge named after a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, this exhibit visually demonstrated the grander built environment that contributed to the movement and sacred land that changed significantly American history that is in a deteriorating condition. The presentation will entail an overview of the exhibition’s preparation, the cities of Marion, Selma, and Montgomery, Alabama that were instrumental to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition, it will feature the residents and structures that offered themselves to the movement and felt the backlash of white supremacy thereafter. Finally, the presentation will discuss the impact of trained architecture students as educators, and if and how visualizing history through archives and technology can enrichen people’s experience of the past and motivate their involvement in modern social events. The culmination of the class’s work led to the granting of the People’s Choice Award decided by the thousands of visitors to the Smithsonian during the exhibit’s three-day display.