The Michigan Coalition for Human Rights, the City of Detroit’s Civil Rights Inclusion and Opportunities Department, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Wayne State University are bringing four days of civil rights history, community education, and hands-on learning to Metro Detroit youth this July and August.

Detroit has always been a city of movement — a city where people organized, resisted, built, and refused to accept the world as it was handed to them. The Freedom Tour exists to make sure the next generation knows that history — not as something that happened somewhere else, to someone else, a long time ago — but as something that happened here, on these streets, in these neighborhoods, and is still unfolding today.

Founded in 1989 by the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR), the Freedom Tour is one of Metro Detroit’s longest-running youth civil rights education programs. It was named in the spirit of the Freedom Riders, activists who rode buses into the segregated South in 1961 to challenge unjust laws, and it has carried that legacy forward ever since, connecting young people with the history and the community leaders shaping Detroit’s future.

This summer, co-organized with the Civil Rights, Inclusion & Opportunity (CRIO) Department of the City of Detroit, the Freedom Tour returns to Detroit!

What Is the Freedom Tour?

The 2026 Freedom Tour is a four-day immersive program running from Thursday, July 30 through Sunday, August 2, 2026. Each day runs from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with breakfast, lunch, and snacks provided for all participants.

The program is structured as a two-part series:

Part 1 — In-Person Seminar (July 30–31) Two full days of guest speakers, interactive workshops, and educational sessions covering Detroit history, civil rights, policy, and youth power. Sessions are designed to be discussion-driven and hands-on — not lectures to sit through, but conversations to be part of.

Part 2 — Field Trip via Charter Bus (August 1–2) Two days on a charter bus touring civil rights and community landmarks across Metro Detroit. From the Birwood Wall to the Boggs Center, from historic churches to urban agriculture hubs — every stop is a living chapter of Detroit’s story, contextualized historically, politically, and personally.

What You’ll Learn

The seminar curriculum was built to give students not just awareness, but a framework — a way of understanding how Detroit got here, what forces have shaped it, and what tools exist to change it.

Day 1 — Thursday, July 30 sessions include:

• Foundations of Detroit & The Great Migration (1910–1970) — Why Black families came to Detroit from the South, what they built, and how that shaped neighborhoods, culture, and political power in ways still felt today. Led by Jamon Jordan, the City of Detroit’s Official Historian.
• Housing, Redlining & Gentrification — The mechanics of legal segregation, discriminatory lending, why the suburbs were created, and how housing inequality drives educational inequity.
• Race and Policing in America — Youth criminalization, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the history of the carceral state.
• Voting Rights and Political Power — Disenfranchisement, the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering, and how Detroit-area communities have organized electorally — including disability voting access.

Workshops on Day 1 include Know Your Rights and Community Organizing 101.

Day 2 — Friday, July 31 sessions include:

• Food Security — Detroit’s food landscape and how it connects to the larger topic of sustainability.
• Labor Movement & Union History in Detroit — Working-class power, interracial organizing, the UAW, and auto workers.
• Youth-Led Movements in Detroit — From civil rights youth organizers to present-day activists, a lineage of young people who changed history.
• Global Solidarity — Anti-colonial movements and how Detroit’s struggles connect to movements across the globe: Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti, Iran, and beyond.

Workshops on Day 2 include a Digital Rights & Surveillance Workshop and a Restorative vs. Punitive Justice Workshop.

Who Can Apply?

The Freedom Tour is open to high school students from Detroit and the Metro Detroit area. To qualify, students must have attended 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade during the 2025–2026 school year and completed their grade level by June 2026.

All meals are provided. Transportation is provided via charter bus for the field trip portion.

Application deadline is July 15, 2026. Use the QR code in the flyer below!

Why This Program Matters

Detroit is civil rights history. The buildings, neighborhoods, churches, and community spaces on this tour’s itinerary are not museum pieces — they are sites where organizing still happens, where people are still fighting for the same things the Freedom Riders fought for, just with different names and in new forms.

Programs like the Freedom Tour matter because they create the conditions for young people to see themselves as part of that continuum. When a student stands at the Birwood Wall, when they sit in a session about redlining and recognize their own neighborhood on a historical map, when they hear from a community organizer who started exactly where they are — something shifts. Not just awareness. Agency.

The Freedom Tour has been doing that work since 1989. This summer, it’s doing it in Detroit.

Questions?

Reach out directly to the organizing team:

• Salma Hamamy — salmahamamy@gmail.com
• Khurram Imam — khurram.imam@detroitmi.gov

The Freedom Tour Detroit 2026 is co-organized by the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights (MCHR) and the Civil Rights, Inclusion & Opportunity (CRIO) Department of the City of Detroit, in partnership with the ACLU, and Wayne State University.

Khurram Imam is the Director of Zaki Impact Consulting, where he helps governments, nonprofits, and foundations design strategies and programs that are equitable, measurable, and built to last. His work sits at the intersection of public health, workforce development, and community systems. Connect with him on LinkedIn or explore his services at khurramimam.com/services.