Lessons for the present in Sojourn to the Past

By SEAN BARRON

news@vindy.com

Bray’den Little’s desire and primary goal for having embarked on a weeklong traveling civil-rights journey through the Deep South could be summed up by saying she wants to build bridges, not walls.

“I think Sojourn to the Past will help me have a better idea of why people deserve their freedom and their rights,” the Youngstown Early College 10th-grader explained.

Bray’den was among the 12 Mahoning Valley high school students who returned late Friday after having left March 29 for the immersive traveling American history experience, which began in Atlanta and ended at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death April 4, 1968, at what is now a civil-rights museum. The 12, along with six area adults, joined about 120 other middle- and high-school students, teachers and others mainly from the San Francisco and Portland, Ore., areas to see key sites related to and meet people who were pivotal in the modern civil-rights movement.

Among those the group met were Georgia Congressman and longtime civil-rights icon John Lewis; Minnijean Brown Trickey and Elizabeth Eckford, two of nine black students who integrated the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in September 1957; and Sarah Collins-Rudolph, whose sister Addie Mae Collins was one of four girls killed in the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Collins-Rudolph was seriously injured in the blast.

Beginning last November, the 12 local students had received weekly study classes to prepare them for the transformative journey.

The 20-year-old Millbrae, Calif.-based nonprofit Sojourn to the Past program bases its curriculum on lessons from the movement to encourage and empower participants to use their voices to stand up to injustices, advocate for social change, further develop critical-thinking skills, see the corrosive effects of racism and better understand how using degrading language and dehumanizing others often provides a breeding ground for committing violent acts against them, according to its website.

Bray’den, who hopes to become a lawyer, cited King’s “Mountaintop” speech as the most moving aspect of the journey. Beforehand, she was unaware of the 43-minute presentation King delivered April 3, 1968, to draw support for the estimated 1,300 striking sanitation workers in Memphis, which was the final speech of his life.

Also inspiring to her were Brown Trickey and Eckford, both of whom endured tremendous bullying and torment during their time at Central High.

“I feel they made me think that so much we take for granted, like school diversity,” Bray’den continued. “Minnijean and Elizabeth Eckford are the reasons I can go to school with a variety of people, and have the freedom I have, like in playing sports.”

Inspirational

Inspirational was the word that immediately came to mind for Ja’liyha Whitted-May, a Chaney High School sophomore, after having gotten acquainted with Lewis.

“I was so happy to meet him; he did a lot for my freedom. He taught me that I can get good grades and move forward,” said Ja’liyha, who added that she feels the experience will enable her to be more open with other people.

STTP also may assist Ja’liyha in her quest to become a neonatal nurse largely by allowing her to better connect with parents and children, she continued.

The May 1963 Children’s Crusade in Birmingham significantly impacted Jenna Gebhardt, who said she saw a part of herself in the youngsters’ tenacity and courage to march en masse for several days to protest deeply entrenched segregation in that city. More than 4,000 young activists were arrested during the nonviolent demonstrations on charges of marching without a permit, and many others were sprayed with firehoses or bitten by dogs per the orders of Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s racist public-safety director.

“I was awakened to the fact that I have a voice,” explained the Howland High School 10th-grader, whose ambitions include pursuing a career in neuroscience. “I can stand up and not be judged.”

Other area students who took the journey were Miah Pierce, Jenaya Conley, Keirshara Price and Zyairra Brown of Early College; Lillie Alvarado of Chaney; Lyric Goliday, Rayshelle Keys and Joseph Dixon of East High School; and Brandon Summerlin of Howland High.

The bus trip through the South proved therapeutic for Courtney Angelo, a Wilson Elementary School fourth-grade teacher, who said she plans to use the remainder of the school year to show her students videos and photographs related to the civil-rights movement to help them “understand that this was not that long ago.”

“I feel that Sojourn to the Past was very inspiring to me. I want to go back and teach everyone about nonviolence and how we all have the power to make a change,” she explained.

Catalyst

The catalyst for Angelo to make the journey was Aleysha Rosario, 9, who was one of five children killed in a fire Dec. 9 at their Parkcliffe Avenue home. Aleysha also was one of her students.

Angelo established what she sees as a direct link between Aleysha and the four girls killed in the Birmingham church fire, saying they all “left a beautiful legacy,” and that Aleysha’s death “brought many opportunities just for my learning and being a leader for the rest of my kids.”

The Sojourn experience also should challenge participants to first re-examine themselves, then think before they act and strive to follow King’s six principles of nonviolence, noted Penny Wells, the Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past organization’s executive director.

In addition, she praised the local students for their participation in the program, saying that most of them sat in the front rows during classroom lessons given by Jeff Steinberg, the national program’s founder and director.

“They came well prepared to experience the Sojourn immersion into the civil-rights movement,” Wells observed. “I hope the kids have the nonviolence principles within themselves, speak out to their peers and talk to their principals regarding what to do in their schools, especially during Nonviolence Week.”