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CPS Students Travel To Memphis For King Anniversary

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Forty students from three CPS high schools are traveling to Memphis to pay tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King on the 50th anniversary of his assassination

CBS 2's Jim Williams reports, students from Hirsch, Harlan and Bowen high schools will stop at the National Civil Rights Museum, the former Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Hirsch Principal Larry Varn said:  "If our students are going to be studying this history in school, we want them to experience it in person and really make the pages in their history books come to life for them."

They will also tour several historically black colleges.

"I  feel very grateful that I'm going to get the opportunity because I have -- no one in my family has been able to do anything like this," for senior China Martin, who wants to become an OB/GYN.

Harlan principal Ramona Outlaw said:  "There's a nurturing that goes on at those campuses that is indeed unmatched. The students, I want them to feel like they've come home and that place that they will call home for the next four years is something that they will be proud of."

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