Day one of the 2022 Civil Rights Trip

On the Gordon Civil Rights Trip, the history is around every corner.

 

That history connects directly to the news of the present day.

 

As the twenty-first annual trip began, the weekend's headlines hung heavily.

 

In any decade of the past two centuries, the racially motivated murder of ten Americans would be considered a horror and a tragedy, but not an unimaginable one.

 

As these students have learned in their study of lynching, white Americans have been killing black Americans, publicly, remorselessly, for many years.

 

But the promise of the Civil Rights Trip is that there are other narratives running parallel to this one: narratives of hope.

 

The eighth grade found their first narrative of hope at the trip's first stop, Alabama State University.

 

The Civil Rights Trip always includes a stop at a historically Black college or university.

 

These institutions are, as one chaperone said today, "a miracle"; it had once been illegal to teach an enslaved person to read, and yet those same people founded a tradition of academic and cultural empowerment that continues to this day.

 

The tour guide was charming, and it was a a wonderful first-time college tour for these fourteen-year olds.

 

The standard college facts, the facilities and the size of the libraries, combined seamlessly with images of Black Greek life and stories about the time Dr. King hid from the KKK in a dorm basement.

 

Some of the buildings were named after donors and scholars, but other bore the names of alumni who are in history books, names these students will encounter many times over the course of the week. 

 

ASU alumni Fred Gray and Jo Ann Robinson, for instance, both came up several times at the next stop, the Rosa Parks Museum.

 

It's a powerful museum, set on the corner where Rosa Parks' famous bus ride ended.

 

It uses the source documents and personal narratives to present Rosa Parks's heroism, and the successful bus boycott, as the result of everyday people having extraordinary responses to everyday events.

 

The reenactment of Park's bus ride presents the episode in agonizing detail, highlighting the mean, petty absurdities involved in enforcing segregation in public spaces.

 

Through it all, Parks's story is a presented as a straightforward tale of a community rallying around someone who was tired of submitting to a mundane, daily humiliation.

 

It's a powerful story.

 

Is it true?

 

After leaving the museum, the eighth grade convened at the foot of the Alabama state Capitol for a debrief.

 

"Throughout our studies this year," their humanities teacher began, "we have tried to appreciate institutions for what they do well. And we want to hold them accountable, and encourage them, when we think they can do better."

 

The class then talked about what the Rosa Parks Museum had done well.

 

Then they talked about what the museum could have done better.

 

"You are experts on this story," their teacher invited them, "and you need to bring that expertise to bear here."

 

The story was oversimplified. Rosa Parks didn't simply get tired one day. She was inspired by Emmett Till's murder, and encouraged by lawyers and activists. She was handpicked after Claudette Colvin's own bus protest failed to win community support. She was trained in civil disobedience, and went on to train and inspire countless others.

 

This was not the story the museum presented.

 

What's more: the museum used minstrel imagery, racially coded language and accents that bordered on caricature, and outdated language that, in the students' opinion, needed to be handled far more thoughtfully.

 

"Imagine you are a child who goes to a school where teachers are not allowed to teach about America's racial history. What would you take away from this museum?"

 

That question from their teacher brought the conversation quickly, finally, to Buffalo. 

 

Events like Buffalo would continue, the students said, as long as young people aren't taught the truth about America's racial history.

 

And it's not enough to simply be taught facts that are not wrong. 

 

We need to tell the whole story.

 

The ugly episodes, and the uplifting ones.

The hidden histories along with the headlines.

 

It was a good conversation for day one. 

Tomorrow, they'll talk some more, together.

 

dozens more photos from day one

ahead to day two

Lest anyone think it the Civil Rights Trip is all heavy conversations, these two leapt up from the Rosa Parks and immediately began bickering over who is taller? 

 

Eighth graders are capable of great goofiness and weighty seriousness, almost simultaneously. More goofiness from today here and here.