Why Montgomery. Why Selma. Why Now.
In October 2025, ECFC members gathered in Montgomery and Selma for our Fall Member Meeting and Alabama Learning Tour. We came together not simply to learn, but to bear witness to history, place, and the people who have long carried the work of justice forward.
Across museums, memorials, community spaces, and learning centers, members encountered the lived realities behind the data and policy debates shaping early childhood philanthropy today. These were not abstract lessons. They were human, rooted, and urgent.
This page brings together video testimonials and reflections from the Learning Tour as a shared resource for members and the broader philanthropic community. The stories lifted up here invite reflection on responsibility, power, and what it means to act with courage in this moment.
Video Testimonials from the Alabama Learning Tour
Throughout the Learning Tour, members and community leaders shared reflections on what they witnessed, learned, and are carrying forward. These video testimonials capture moments of reckoning, connection, and resolve.
Each voice speaks to a different dimension of the experience, yet together they point toward a shared truth: understanding history requires proximity, and meaningful philanthropy requires action informed by that understanding.
A Personal Account from Selma
Christine Spear
When a Building Holds More Than Bricks is a first-person account by Dr. Christine Spear, a retired educator who integrated a formerly all-white elementary school in Selma as a child.
Her story traces the transformation of a school building from a site of exclusion and isolation to one of belonging and care. It connects personal memory with collective history, and reminds us that progress is carried by ordinary people whose names are often missing from the record.
Christine’s account grounds the Learning Tour in lived experience and invites readers to consider how history shows up not only in monuments, but in classrooms, communities, and the choices we make today.
Our Alabama resources and reflections are offered as a tool for learning, dialogue, and accountability. Members have shared them with colleagues, boards, and partners as a way to ground conversations about equity, power-building, and philanthropy’s role in supporting children, families, and communities.
Whether you joined the Learning Tour or are engaging from afar, we invite you to sit with these stories and consider what they ask of us next.
Continuing the Work
We share these voices not as a conclusion, but as part of an ongoing commitment to learning from history and from community leadership. The lessons of Montgomery and Selma do not belong to the past. They live in the choices we make now.