Youngstown students uphold voting sign-up promise

YOUNGSTOWN — Kyonia Johnson is a young woman who likes to keep her promises.

So are Rukiya Fleming, Mallory Kimble, Jasamine Driskell and Niya Merriweather.

The five are city high school students who made a “Sojourn to the Past,” last spring, an educational trip for high school students that takes them to historic civil rights sites and gives them the opportunity to meet some of the people who played major roles in the movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

They came back from that journey vowing to be active agents for change and giving back to their community.

They began planning a voter registration drive, the type of activity so prominent in the battle for civil rights, intending to launch the drive in the city high schools.

The effort got put on hold as the school year came to an end but planning began again with the start of the new school year last fall, said Johnson, now a junior at East High School.

All five young women are part of that effort but they lost the help of a sixth person who made the Sojourn trip with them. Candace Okello, a senior last year, has graduated and is enrolled in college.

The others, with the help of students who will be making a Sojourn trip this year as well as friends and some adults, launched the drive last week, signing up a couple of hundred new voters at East and Chaney high schools and Youngstown Early College.

Merriweather, now a sophomore at YEC, led the drive there while Kimble (a sophomore), Driskell (a senior) and Fleming ( a senior), all at Chaney, handled the effort in that building.

Johnson organized the drive at East.

At 16, she’s too young to register herself, but that doesn’t stop her from delivering her message to others.

“It’s very important for me to register people to vote and tell them how important it is,” Johnson said, adding, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

“I’m a person who always likes to keep my promises,” she said, adding that motto also applies to the other girls who took the Sojourn last spring.

The commitment to make a difference in their community has “absolutely” remained strong, she said.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.