As we got off the bus, Montgomery, Alabama, was eerily silent. The 16 of us expected a tumbleweed to pass by at any moment.

As our first stop on the Youth Theological Initiative “Praying With Our Feet” Travel Seminar, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the only church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pastored, became a monumental part of our experience, for reasons no one quite expected.

Thalia Butts, 17, is a senior at DeKalb School of the Arts. She has developed a new love for the state of Alabama and untold stories of the Civil Rights Movement.