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Day two of the 2017 Civil Rights Trip

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This year, Joanne Bland was Gordon’s host in Selma, Alabama.
 
 

As a child, she participated in the Bloody Sunday confrontation on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, in the run-up to the successful Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery.
 
 

This year’s eighth grade warmed quickly to her blunt and often hilarious analysis.
 
 

All of it was backed up by her obvious love of her hometown.
 
 

She knows Selma inside and out, and read the city like a book as the bus drove through.
 
 

On one block she was pointing out the building where the slaveholding pens had been.
 
 

Turn the corner, and she was having the students wave back to Nancy on the bookstore porch.
 
 

During the 1965 Selma campaign, Boston minister Rev. James Reeb was murdered.
 
 

One of his killers, explained Ms Bland, owned this car lot.
 
 


Some of the things she pointed out might have been obvious to anyone who had lived in the segregated South: the side entrances, back doors, and unmarked neighborhood boundaries that still could be detected today through architectural clues.
 
 

And, after Bland set the context, a home “lovingly restored to the way it was in 1855” did indeed seem like a reactionary act of disrespect.
 
 


In Brown Chapel AME Church, a volunteer reviewed the history of the church, which has hosted to speakers ranging from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to President Obama.
 
 

Outside, Ms. Bland promised that there were many other ways to tell that same story.
 
 

For example: she pointed out the language on a nearby monument, which honored four martyrs who “gave their lives to overcome injustice.”
 
 

“They didn’t give their lives,” Ms. Bland pointed out. “They were murdered.”
 
 


“Do you think they woke up that morning and said ‘I’m going to give my life today’? No. Their lives were taken.”
 
 


Before leaving the neighborhood, she walked the students a few blocks west, towards the house where she grew up.
 
 
 


She sent them over to an aging concrete slab, and told them to each pick up a pebble.
 
 

Once they all had one, she explained that the slab was all that was left of the plaza where the marchers gathered on Bloody Sunday.
 
 

She closed one student’s hand around their rock. “John Lewis stood on your pebble.”
 
 


To another: “Your pebble is where Hosea Williams stood.”
 
 

And to a third? 
 
 

“Yours. I stood on yours.”
 
 

She invited them to bring their pebbles home with them, but only if they considered the responsibility that would come with such a potent symbol.
 


It would be the only souvenir the students picked up in Selma.




Those pebbles were in their pockets when they bid Ms. Bland farewell and set off to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their own.
 
 

And that was just the morning.
 
 

The afternoon began at Montgomery’s Southern Poverty Law Center.
 
 

Every year, the Southern Poverty Law Center consistently gives Gordon a set of speakers who are young and smart, with varied backgrounds and a different stories about how they were drawn into social justice work. 
 
 
 
This year was no different, with a lawyer who advocates for LGBT youth, a young man studying how hate groups use social media, and another lawyer working on a landmark case establishing the rights of the mentally ill in prisons.
 
 
 
In contrast to Joanne Bland’s unwilling martyrs, these were people with a great deal of training - two of them lawyers - who had entered demanding, high-stakes careers with their eyes wide open.
 
 

The Gordon students delivered smart, respectful questions that centered on the practical and concrete.
 
 
 


More than once, the speakers had to stop themselves: “That’s a great question, but the answer might be a little boring.”
 
 


The students just stared expectantly.
 
 

They wanted to know all about it.

 


In the hall outside the classroom, students added their names to the SPLC’s Wall of Tolerance.
 
 


To add their names, they had to commit to a pledge.
 
 

By placing my name on the Wall of Tolerance, I pledge to take a stand against hate, injustice and intolerance. I will work in my daily life for justice, equality and human rights - the ideals for which the Civil Rights martyrs died.
 


Outside, they joined another kind of community.
 
 

Since 2002, when the Civil Rights Trip began, over five hundred Gordon eighth graders have had their class photo taken in Montgomery.
 
 

These thirty-six are the latest members of that society.
 
 

For the rest of the afternoon, Montgomery’s Ann Clemons showed them key sites of Montgomery’s role in the Civil Rights movement.
 
 

In a city so rich in history, time and space can cave in a little.
 
 


The bus terminal where the Freedom Riders disembarked is around the corner from the bus stop where Rosa Parks’ ride was terminated.
 
 

The Voting Rights March followed the same route as Jefferson Davis’ inaugural parade.
 
 

Later that night, during a far-ranging gradewide conversation, students continually reflected on the importance of visiting these sites.
 
 

Even if they don’t remember all the dates and names, these children will remember how it felt to be here.
 
 

When they hear these stories again - about John Lewis’ beatings, or a lawsuit the SPLC has filed - it will all be that much more real.
 
 

And when they are ready to start making their own change in the world, they’ll have a better idea of what will be required of them.


dozens more photos from day two
 
 

 

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