Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past receives $10K grant

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past received a $10,000 grant from the Thomases Family Endowment.

Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past is a nonprofit organization that takes Youngstown high school students on a journey to the civil-rights sites in the South. Students are immersed in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, meeting leaders such as Minnijean Brown Trickey, one of the Little Rock Nine, and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, whose skull was fractured in Selma, Ala.

Students learn the lessons of the movement and return to Youngstown with an action plan to implement in their schools and community.

Sojourn students proposed the “Nonviolence Week in Ohio” law, which designates the first week of October as Nonviolence Week in the state. The annual Nonviolence Parade and Rally on the first Sunday of October was the idea of Sojourn students.