ROSEMONT, Ill. (July 12, 2023) – For the second consecutive year, the Big Ten Conference will lead an unparalleled educational journey for selected student-athletes, coaches, administrators and stakeholders. The “Big Life Series: Selma to Montgomery”, takes place Friday, July 14 through Sunday, July 16, 2023. This immersive and transformational experience will follow the steps of the United States civil rights movement during a trip to Alabama.

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. This year’s event will also feature participants from a handful of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), including Florida A&M University, Howard University and North Carolina A&T University. The centerpiece of the Alabama experience will be a march across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, site of the 1965 Bloody Sunday attack.

The trip 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 University. Friday evening will include keynote speaker and civil rights activist Sheyann Webb-Christburg, known as the “smallest freedom fighter”. 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 and a community service project. Attendees will pack back-to-school backpacks with school supplies and balls provided by Wilson Sporting Goods to promote a healthy and active lifestyle. This will be followed with 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.

The Big Ten Equality Coalition features student-athletes, coaches, athletic directors, chancellors, presidents, and other members of the Big Ten Conference family from all 14 member institutions. It has a stated goal of seeking tangible ways to combat racism and hate around the world, while also empowering student-athletes to express their rights to free speech and peaceful protest actively and constructively. Following the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd, then-Big Ten Conference Commissioner Kevin Warren wrote an open letter on June 1, 2020, officially announcing the formation of the Equality Coalition and the United States Library of Congress included the letter in its historic collection. An early product of the Equality Coalition was the creation of the Big Ten Voter Registration Initiative. The nonpartisan, conference-wide collaboration encourages student-athletes to take part in the electoral process and is led by a Voter Registration Committee that includes representatives from all 14 Big Ten Conference member institutions. The Big Life Series is one of the signature examples of the Big Ten Equality Coalition in action.

The Big Ten Conference (bigten.org) is an association of world-class universities whose member institutions share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching, and public service. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten Conference has sustained a comprehensive set of shared practices and policies that enforce the priority of academics in the lives of students competing in intercollegiate athletics and emphasize the values of integrity, fairness, and competitiveness. The broad-based programs of the 14 Big Ten Conference institutions will provide over $200 million in direct financial support to more than 9,800 students for more than 11,000 participation opportunities on 350 teams in 42 different sports. The Big Ten Conference sponsors 28 official conference sports, 14 for men and 14 for women, including the addition of men’s ice hockey and men’s and women’s lacrosse since 2013.