Big Ten Conference To Dedicate Renovated Public Park As Part Of "Big Life Series: Selma to Montgomery"

ROSEMONT, Ill. – The grand re-opening of a renovated public park in Selma, Alabama, will highlight this weekend’s "Big Life Series: Selma to Montgomery" with more than 150 student-athletes and administrators. The delegation includes student-athletes representing all 18 conference universities and 25 different varsity sports. 

The City of Selma Parks & Recreation Department will celebrate the grand re-opening of the Ronnie Sharpe Park Basketball Court, a newly renovated public space made possible in partnership with the Big Ten, at 9:00 a.m. CT on Saturday, July 19.

“We’re thrilled to return to the Alabama for the fourth consecutive summer, and this year on the 60^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday,” said Omar Brown, Big Ten Conference Senior Vice President for Community and Impact. “Not only can we provide transformative, life-shaping experiences for more than 150 student-athletes and administrators, we want to make a lasting impact in these communities that have welcomed us with open arms.”

“The Big Ten Conference stands committed to not only commemorating Selma’s past but also investing in its future,” said Mayor James Perkins Jr. “Their investment in our parks and youth-centered programming helps create safe, inspiring, and equitable spaces for the next generation.”

The fourth edition of the "Big Life Series: Selma to Montgomery" will include visits to some of the most important sites in the Civil Rights Movement. The group of more than 150 student-athletes, coaches and staff will include representatives from all 18 Big Ten universities, as well as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Alabama State University, Florida A&M, Howard University and North Carolina A&T University.

On Friday, July 18, they will visit the Tuskegee Airmen Historic Site at Moton Field, the only primary flight facility for African-American pilot candidates in the U.S. Army Air Corps (Army Air Forces) during World War II. 

Following the grand re-opening of Ronnie Sharpe Park on the morning of Saturday, July 19, the group will visit First Baptist Church and march across the historic Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma. Now a National Historic Landmark, on March 9, 1965, the bridge was the site of the Bloody Sunday beatings of civil rights marchers during the first march for voting rights. The televised attacks were seen all over the nation, prompting public support for the civil rights activists in Selma and for the voting rights campaign. Students will also assemble 300 knapsacks for local children that will be filled with basketball gear provided by the Big Ten, Franklin Sports, Hypte Branded Solutions, and TIAA, a proud, supporting partner of the Big Life Series.

Saturday afternoon in Montgomery the assembly will hear from educational speakers Sheyann Webb-Christburg and Doris Crenshaw at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the nation’s first state-funded historical agency, established to collect and preserve the historical materials of the people of Alabama. They also will visit the Civil Rights Memorial Center, honoring the martyrs of the movement and inspiring visitors to continue the march for racial equity and social justice, and the award-winning Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Museum,where visitors can travel through 400 years of American history – from enslavement to racial terrorism, to codified segregation, to mass incarceration.