From 2015 through 2017 I had the responsibility and the privilege to take trips across the south with groups of students and citizens of the Seattle area. Scholar, author and UW Professor of Communication David Domke organized these trips, pilgrimages as he called them, in order to provide opportunity for reflection, contemplation and connections between people of diverse backgrounds.
Together we produced audio stories to share.
Robert Moses is a civil rights hero. The chronicler of the civil rights era during the King years, Taylor Branch, says that Moses was a self-effacing, observant and sensitive leader. He told one newspaper, “"To this day he is a startling paradox. I think his influence is almost on par with Martin Luther King, and yet he's almost totally unknown
He is not unknown to generations of students who have benefited from Moses’ belief in the power of math to open doors to opportunity. His Macarthur Genius award testifies to the belief people have in Robert Moses’ approach to civil rights in a time when education holds the key to challenging oppression and prejudice. He continues to work through his national non-profit, “The Algebra Project,” using mathematics as an organizing tool to pursue quality public school education for every child in America.
Robert Moses was in Seattle as a guest of Washington Stem and Project Pilgrimage. He spoke about his own work within the context of American history and his current path to a small group of Project Pilgrimage alums in late November 2017.
Project Pilgrimage’s Sharayah Lane, along with freelance journalist Steve Scher, led the discussion.
The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation brings people together to talk. It may sound simple, but finding the right words to bridge the deep, old divide of bigotry and prejudice in the U.S. is hard work. Community Member Meg Lippert and Utah State University student Lauren Mata marvel at the simple tools that people could use to find common ground.
Lauren Mata, USU student
photo by Troy Bonnes
Meg Lippert, Community Member
photo by Troy Bonnes
Music
"Mississippi Goddam," by Nina Simone
"Mississippi Burning" by Graham Nash
The sense of injustice is a real and palpable feeling. It lays heavy on the heart, breathing quickens, rage builds. So does hope.
UW Communications Chair and Pilgrimage leader David Domke felt it in the dirt on his fingers.
UW Professor David Domke
Photo by Troy Bonnes
Utah State University student Jarlin Division could smell it and taste it, after a night in prison.
Utah State University student Jarlin Division
Photo by Troy Bonnes
Our names have a kind of power. They sketch us, we fill them out.
UW students Michael "Renaissance" Moynihan and Nathan Hamlin Bean share the story of their names.
Michael "Renaissance" Moynihan (Troy Bonnes phot)
Nathan Hamlin Bean at Gee's Bend Quilters Collective, Gee's Bend, Mississippi
Griot's carry the history across regions and eras
On the Bus with the March 2016 Civil Rights Pilgrimage supported by community members and the UW, Bellevue College and USU
Read MoreThe story of Emmett Till's brutal murder resonates through the years. The civil rights pilgrims, students from UW, Bellevue College and Utah State University as well as adult community members from around the NW, walked through the Emmett Till Museum, established in tiny Glendora Mississippi through the efforts of the town's mayor, Johnny B. Thomas. Back on the bus, Community member Julie Lyons and University of Washington Student Kira Baker were still processing the moment and how Till's murder affected America.
Playbill image from The Ballad of Emmett Till
We've got Mississippi on our minds. We traveled to Money, Mississippi, where we stood outside the decaying building that once housed a grocery infamous in American history.
In August, 1955, Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Money, a small town in the Mississippi Delta. He may have spoken to 21 year old Carole Bryant, the white, married proprietor of the store. If so, that simple act was his death sentence.
Three nights later, Roy Bryant, Carole's husband, and his half brother J.W. Milam, abducted Till. They beat him, mutilated him, shot him and threw his body in the Tallahatchie river. His bloated corpse was found three days later.
Mamie Till-Mobley, Till's mother, held a public funeral in Chicago. His body was displayed in an open casket. The event exposed American racism to the world.
In September 1955, Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till's kidnapping and murder. Protected from being tried again, they admitted to Look Magazine that they had killed Till. Their justification was that they thought young man had whistled at Carole Bryant.
The crime became a symbol of the failure of the justice system and the murderous terror of white supremacy.
Across the country today, the murder of Emmett Till still resonates, one of many crimes, past and present, that can still instill fear and anger. It brought UW student Davon White and community member Calvin Lyons into conversation.
The family involved in the crime is letting the building fall apart, but the memory of that awful crime taints the region. We traveled on to nearby Sumner where the Till murderers were acquitted by all an white jury. The courthouse has been renovated, according to the Emmet Till Commission, to serve as an interpretive site marking the crime and efforts at reconciliation. We also visited the small town of Glendora, where the Mayor has built a museum to the crime, The Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center. He calls his tour "The Till Trail of Terror." The small museum recreates the era and the crime.
In Sumner, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center is trying to offer a space for reconciliation.
But the truth has to be acknowledged before any reconciliation can take place and according to Patrick Weems who directs the center and Glendora Mayor Johnny B.Thomas, many people in the region do not want to deal with truth of their past.
The murderers were never brought to justice. They both died of cancer. In 2004 the Justice Department reopened the case. It was acting on information that people still living were implicated. In 2007, a grand jury declined to seek any indictments.
We went to Money, Mississippi to track the legacy of the murder of Emmett Till. The murder was more than 60 years ago, but it isn't forgotten. The pain seems to linger like a heavy shadow over parts of the Mississippi Delta. Community member Ron Posthuma and Bellevue College Student Samri Tasew were dealing with that weight.
Ron Posthuma and Samri Tasew on the bus. ( photo by Troy Bonnes)
We are just off the Bus, in Greenwood, Mississippi, standing in the park where in 1966 Stokely Carmicheal (Kwame Ture) gave the speech that brought the concept of black power into public consciousness. What did it mean? Why did it frighten so many whites while worrying some black activists and empowering others? More importantly, what is the connection between black power and black lives matter?
Bob Zellner, longtime civil rights activist and UW student Michael Moynihan, student leader of the civil rights pilgrimage and black lives matter activist talk to the group about the links from past to present.
Warning, there are a couple of swear words.
Anthony Ray Hinton was freed after spending 30 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. The Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery Alabama, helped secure Hinton's release. He has come out without bitterness, without anger.
Community member and Pilgrimage musician Mark Pearson reflects with community member Jeanine Blue Lupton about HInton's conscious rejection of hatred for the people who deliberately imprisoned him. The Equal Justice Initiative was formed to change the American prison system. Hinton is one of more than 156 people exonerated or released from death row in the U.S. since 1973.
Jeanine was struck by a different moment from our trip. White privilege is a term many white people don't quite get. But during a discussion of whether our diverse group should go to a Trump rally, that concept became clear to many on the bus.
Community member Rita Kelly has been inspired by the courage of the youth who drove the civil rights movement 60 years ago. She sees it in youth today. Utah State University Professor and Pilgrimage leader Jason Gilmore can see courage rise in spite of pain, but the pain is still present and very real.
We traveled to the highest peaks and lowest valleys in one day. On the the bus to Birmingham, we talked to each other about the ride so far. Community members Sly Cann and Susan Schulkin talked about the challenge of opening up to strangers on a cramped bus and wondered how other folks might respond to such an exhilarating but exhausting day.
The struggles for civil rights in America didn't happen by accident. The actions that led to the end of Jim Crow were planned and executed by people trained in direct action.
54 people are on a bus traveling across the American South. First Stop, Nashville, home of American Baptist College and Fisk University, two Historically Black Colleges where civil rights eraprotests and actions of the late 1950's and 1960's were planned and co-ordinated by students.
Community member Marissa Vichayapai, Bellevue College Student Chloe Copoloff, UW student and leader Simon Tran, Community member and Bellevue College High School teacher Luke Michener, Bellevue student Shreyas Raman and Community member Mike Halprin talk about their experiences as the pilgrimage begins.
52 folks are about to step onto a big bus in Nashville, Tennessee. We are on a civil rights pilgrimage together. Our goal is to better understand the struggles of the past and the present.
Who are we? Well, one way to explore that is by answering the question, what is the story of your name?
Who's name?
Kira Baker, Alice Bell, Chloe Copoloff, Jarlin Division, Gigi Huang, Lauren Mata, Shreyas Raman, Simon Tran, Devon White
Martha Hawkins serves hope and faith along with black-eyed peas.
Read MoreThe foot soldiers of the civil rights movement were shot, beaten, jailed, even murdered. Yet they kept on marching. Love for their community and faith in justice bound them. Music was the glue.
From the Mississippi Delta, the call for Black Power, electrified the nation in the 1960's. For some it was an affirmation of hope and strength, a path to economic and political empowerment.
For all the ways we devise to pull communities apart, people find ways to rebuild,
History doesn’t stay in the past.
The issues that drove an earlier generation to demand justice for all remain unresolved.
I’m Cynthia Wanjiku along with Scott MacDonald, Michael, “Renaissance”Moynihan and Sade Britt.
We are part of a multi generational, multi-ethnic, multi gender group of 53 people from the Pacific Northwest and we are on a pilgrimage across the American south.
We are riding a bus thru Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi.
We are seeking the links in the chain that connect the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s to the ongoing quest for equal justice in the 21st century.
