Students bike from Wilmington to Florida to learn about U.S. history
A local cycling organization is using long-range bicycle tours to teach students aspects of American history they haven’t learned in the classroom.
Triangle Bikeworks is on a mission to help students of color gain access to a new activity while also changing the way they see the world around them.
“At the end of the day, it’s literally you, that bike, and this journey,” said Triangle Bikeworks trip leader Itza Salazar.
For two weeks this summer, a pack of more than a dozen uniformed cyclists whizzed down highways, sidewalks and country roads along the Atlantic coast.
The makeup of this team of athletes was as unique as the reason for their ride.
“The youth traveled from Carrboro, North Carolina all the way down to Saint Augustine, Florida, just taking in all of the rich history,” Salazar said.
Together they pulled back the curtain on some of the lost parts of American history.
“There is so much history that isn’t being taught in the school system,” Salazar said. “We found these amazing communities, that have been cultivating, and just having this history that they’re trying to share with people.”
This year’s Spoke’n Revolutions tour was the Gullah Geechee historic corridor: a 770-mile ride from Wilmington down to northeast Florida, with students stopping at historic sites linked to slavery and Black history along the way.
“Throughout the entire process I was able to learn a lot about myself and history,” said student Monica Green. “You were able to take more time to just look around you, and really take in everything.”
Green told WRAL News the trip gave the students a new understanding of history, but they also got to pass some of that knowledge on to others — passersby who were curious about the group of young cyclists.
“Maybe just letting them know what we’re doing would spark an interest for them to want to go and look it up for themselves, and educate themselves about it,” Green said.
While the trip came to an end in Saint Augustine, those students are also on a greater journey lasting a lifetime.
After crossing the finish line and learning to engage with the world around them, the cyclists have a new perspective for the road that lies ahead.
“It really brings it full circle,” Salazar said. “What you read in a textbook will never, ever be able to explain what people endured, and being on a bike, and being able to travel this, gets you a little bit closer but still nowhere close to what reality was back then.”
