For 12 students, February break was one vacation they would never forget. These students participated in the Sojourn trip, which takes students to visit five Southern states.
They met activists who were involved in the civil rights movement and visited sights of historical significance. Leading up to the trip, students had been meeting during X-block and every Monday after school to prepare and raise money for the trip.
Sophomore Taylor James, whose grandmother grew up in Mississippi, said she became interested in the trip because she wanted to learn history first-hand.
“I don’t want anything to be sugarcoated,” said James before the trip. “I want to know exactly what it was and exactly how it felt. I’m excited for it to be real and for me to actually feel the experience.”
Over the 10-day break, the students visited states including Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas. There, they had a chance to meet with activists who were involved in the civil rights movement.
“We met a person from a group of nine who first integrated to all-white Central High School in Little Rock,” said junior Tahira Saalik.
She said she felt inspired to meet the activists in real life.
“She went to better her community,” Saalik said. “Now what can I do to better mine? It was a lot of self-reflection.”
James, who went on the trip in 2012, said the trip was a different learning experience.
“In school, you learn about the March on Washington and about Martin Luther King and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, but there was a lot more to it. There were about 20 other speakers, and we learned that there are about 12 more minutes to the speech before King even said ‘I have a dream,” James said. “So, there is a lot more that we didn’t even know. It was eye-opening.”
Saalik, whose parents and grandparents were active in the civil rights movement, said that she appreciated the opportunity to meet other activists in real life, most of whom are old. A civil rights activist named Fred Shuttlesworth, who was part of the Sojourn program, died a few months before Saalik went on the trip.
“It made me realize that these people aren’t going to be here forever,” she said. “It’s such a great opportunity to meet them now when we can.”
Caroline Fishkin can be contacted at [email protected].
