Sojourn founder to visit students, parents, community

YOUNGSTOWN — The founder and director of Sojourn to the Past, a program that takes high school students on historic trips to locations where civil rights history was made in this country, will be in Youngstown next week.

Jeff Steinberg will be meeting with city school students and parents, and speak to the community, during a two-day visit.

Steinberg, a former teacher who developed the Sojourn trip about a decade ago, will discuss “Lessons of the Civil Rights Movement” during his meetings with 10th-graders at Youngstown Early College at 8 a.m. Monday, school parents at the school district central office building on Wood Street at 10 a.m. Monday and 10th-graders at East and Chaney high schools at 8 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., respectively, on Tuesday.

Small groups of Youngstown students have participated in the interactive Sojourn experience over the last three years, visiting historic civil rights sites in the South and meeting and talking with people who actually lived those experiences.

Steinberg will have supper with the students on Monday before a 7 p.m. public speech at the main branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and the Mahoning Valley, 305 Wick Ave. That session is open to the public.

Youngstown’s Sojourn students are planning a “Nonviolence Week” program in the city schools in early October.