Sojourn students uphold promise

The students remained true to a commitment they made nearly a year ago.

By HAROLD GWIN

VINDICATOR EDUCATON WRITER

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.

They wrote letters to themselves while on the trip, jotting down their thoughts and their experiences. The organization that runs Sojourn held those letters for six months and then mailed them to the participants.

The letters were “a reminder of the things we went through, the goals we set, the promises we made,” Johnson said, explaining the letters served to keep their interest focused.

Penny Wells, the retired city schoolteacher who organized the Sojourn trip and is still involved in various school projects, said the young women have worked hard to make the voter registration project a reality.

She’s organizing another trip this spring for 10 city school students and has seven girls and two boys signed up so far.

The high school registration drive got some help from a couple of other different quarters.

Kurt Welsh, a deputy clerk with the Mahoning County Board of Elections, said the board has assisted at the registration sites in Youngstown and will hit every high school in the county before Election Day. Most have already been visited and those who register now will be able to vote in the March primary, he said.

Local women from Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., an international service organization, also came out to help register students.

Young people need to be aware and be involved, one member said ,explaining why the sorority volunteered its help. Voter registration is one of its service projects.

The organization is also helping to sponsor the next Sojourn trip.

gwin@vindy.com