Honors students to travel to Memphis

Some of the students in the Jane Stephens Honors Program will be taking a trip to Memphis, Tenn. on Saturday, April 12. This will be the eighth time that this trip has been made by Southeast Missouri State honors students.

Dr. Craig Roberts is head of the Memphis trip. It originally started out as a field trip for Dr. Peter Hirschburg's UI100 class, Rock N' Roll and Revolution. Hirschburg retired a few years ago but continues to assist in the planning. The trip is dedicated to learning more about civil rights and how music influenced the advance of civil rights.

"There are some fairly intense things that students will be looking at throughout the day in terms of the civil rights conflicts and things of that nature," Roberts said.

The group will arrive first at the National Civil Rights Museum located at the Lorraine Hotel where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The group will also go to the Rock-n-Soul Museum.

"There are some very popular, familiar names such as Elvis Presley, who was able to take the soul music of the African American people and present it to the white audience," Roberts said.

Most of the day may be scheduled, but there will be some free time on the trip for the students to enjoy themselves.

"There will be considerable free time at lunch for students to eat on Beale Street, which is a famous street known for Rock n' Soul music," Roberts said.

The final destination of the day will be the Peabody Hotel to watch the "Marching of the Ducks."

"They have a flock of ducks on the top of the roof of the Peabody Hotel. In the morning, they have a trainer that brings them down the elevator, and they have a red carpet to a fountain in the lobby. The ducks just stay there and play in the fountain all day while the people are registering and walking around, and then at 5 o'clock, they have a big production with music, and several hundred people will be there to watch the ducks. They start the music and the ducks will start swimming around the fountain and they they will hop out of the fountain and march in line back to the elevator and back to their quarters at the top of the hotel," Roberts explained.

The trip itself is free for the students, but meals are financially up to them.

"We pay for the museum tickets, and we pay for the transportation. Now, they are responsible for their meals. We usually stop at McDonalds for breakfast, then lunch on Beale Street, and then dinner if they want to do that as well," Roberts said.

The students will depart from the Honors House at 7 a.m. arrive back at 10 p.m.