Youngstown students take Sojourn to the Past

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Seventeen East, Chaney, Youngstown Early College, Cardinal Mooney and Mahoning County High School students will fly to Little Rock, Ark., where they will join students from California and Alabama to participate in a weeklong journey to civil-rights sites in the South called Sojourn to the Past.

They will travel from Little Rock to Memphis, Tenn.; Jackson, Hattiesburg and Meridian, Miss.; and Birmingham and Selma, Ala.

Sojourn to the Past is a history immersion, life-changing, leadership development experience.

Students will meet veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, among them:

Jimmy Webb, who at 16 stood up to the sheriff in Selma in 1965 when he asked to pray at the courthouse.

The Rev. Clark Olson, who was with the Rev. James Reeb when he was killed the day after Bloody Sunday in Selma.

The remaining surviving mother of one of the four little girls killed by the Ku Klux Klan in the church bombing in Birmingham.

Elizabeth Eckford and Minnijean Brown Trickey of the Little Rock Nine, who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957.

The students also learn the lessons of the movement: compassion, nonviolence, tolerance, justice, forgiveness, civic responsibility and not being a silent witness.

Since November, students have been meeting weekly to prepare for this journey by reading U.S. Rep. John Lewis’s book, “Walking With the Wind,” and learning the history of the movement.

It is a working trip. Students have lessons before meeting speakers or visiting historical sites, and they have homework daily including articles to read, questions to answer, letters to write to speakers, and a journal to keep.

They have workshops on the principles of nonviolence and institutionalized racism. They learn that during the Civil Rights Movement, people were willing to suffer – even die – trying to gain equal rights. Students are constantly asked, “What are you willing to put your life on the line for? How are you going to make a difference when you return home?”

In Birmingham, Youngstown students will develop an action plan to implement when they return home.