“Waking up at 3:30 a.m. certainly isn’t my favorite thing to do on a Sunday morning, but it was definitely worth it for this trip.” So said Ana Leigh, one of the 42 Carrboro High School students in Matt Cone’s Global Cultures classes who traveled to Alabama the weekend before Thanksgiving.
The experience was built around the study of the 2014 book Just Mercy and the work of its author, civil rights and criminal justice lawyer, Bryan Stevenson. However, the trip brought powerful learning and revelations that reached well beyond the hour spent with the noted activist at his non-profit law firm Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). “It wasn’t ‘just a field trip,’” said parent Chris Simmons, a Duke assistant vice-president in Government Relations. “It was a well-thought out, academic experience that required the students to think, prepare and reflect in ways that they aren’t always required to do. Isabel is still talking about the trip, and we have no doubt that her exposure to the issues and people in Alabama will continue to shape her worldview.”
The students wrote journal entries, recording their evolving ideas about history, race and identity, as well as capturing moments of high emotion and humor. One powerful moment of connection is cited in an entry by Simmons’ daughter Isabel, who quoted one of the chaperones, Leah Abrams, a 2016 Carrboro High graduate who now attends Duke. “Leah Abrams’ words really stuck with me. She said that over her time on this Earth, she’s learned that the most important, impactful thing one can do as a White Ally is to sit back, keep their mouth shut, and just listen to the words, thoughts, and ideas, of their peers of color. I thought that sentiment made sense, and it is a strategy I plan to carry with me not only for the rest of the trip, but in my day-to-day life.”
After twelve hours on the bus, students arrived in Selma late Sunday afternoon where they met Joanne Bland, a tour guide with deep roots in the civil rights history of that city. Every single student shared at least a few thoughts about Bland’s impact on their understanding of the March on Selma and Bloody Sunday in 1965; some students filled nearly a page, writing about their guide. “She told everyone to pick up a rock,” wrote Ana Leigh. “To me and everyone else, it seemed a little silly picking up a random rock off of the ground. But then Ms. Bland went on to tell us that that was the rock she and countless other people stood on, on March 7, 1965. The rocks we held in our hands were pieces of history.”
Cameron Farrar wrote about the impact of Bland leading the group across the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge. “I left my phone on the bus because I wanted this to be a moment when I connected to (the experience of) being there. Once we got off the bus to start the walk I began crying. It was not that the particular history was one I was unaware of, but because of the fact that I was hearing a first hand description of what took place and the reminder that our country is filled with so much hate that these poor people were not protected, yet folded back into their hometowns and were beaten all through the night.” Bland told her she didn’t have time to cry, “that you must do something about it.” Farrar wrote, “That really settled with me.”
“We concluded by coming back to the bridge and lining up two by two to march,” said Niya Fearrington. “It was a catalyst for me because it was like stepping in the steps of past innovators and world changers, and it was if it was confirming and setting me up for all the things to come.”
Curtis Kinnaman wrote, “The bridge was narrower than I expected. As we walked, I attempted to picture what that day was like, what it was like to have police intent on violence riding on horseback trying to chase you and beat you off of the bridge. However, no amount of imagining can even come close to what it was like on that day. The feeling of walking across that bridge was surreal and one I cannot describe. It was quite an extraordinary day and it was eye opening for me in many ways.”
On Monday the students started the day in the company of Elijah Gaddis, a UNC PhD graduate who’s now a professor at Auburn. Gaddis is a public historian, a curator of digital projects, including “A Red Record,” a documentation of lynchings in the American South. Kate Brownstein reflected on how her attitude toward claiming North Carolina as her home state shifted after talking to Gaddis. “Elijah was saying… that being proud of North Carolina does not mean that we are supporting the problems or the bad parts, but we can be proud of good parts, making the point that having pride and also having things that need to be changed are not mutually exclusive.”
An encounter that students recorded with excitement and detail was a random meeting with a middle-aged artist named Frank Hardy. He encountered the group on the streets of Montgomery and after clearing his invitation with Mr. Cone, he led everyone to his painting studio and kept his audience enthralled as he told the story about growing up black, poor and extremely dyslexic in the 1950’s. Many students wrote longer passages about their experience with the artist than they did about any other part of the trip. David Knox wrote, “He talked about how growing up, he didn’t entirely understand the concept of “whiteness” and considered the poor white people around him as just fair-skinned black people. That was a particularly interesting idea for me, as I grew up poor with a similar sort of ignorance/innocence regarding race.”
David Gonzalez-Chavez noted, “The story of Frank’s life was one which inspired me greatly; it showed me how it is possible to chase dreams and achieve them even given extreme hardships.”
From Frank Hardy’s studio, the group walked to the Southern Poverty Law Center and a meeting with its president Richard Cohen. Before their conversation with Cohen, the students toured the Center, and many of them recorded the impact of seeing numerous shelves filled with different colors of soil from the places where lynchings have occurred. “They covered a whole wall and there are still more to come…,” wrote one student.
Cohen’s remarks and exhortations affected some students strongly; he challenged them to comprehend the impact of low voter participation and cited the 100 million voters who didn’t turn out in 2016. Gonzalez-Chavez wrote, “He inspired me to act in whatever ways that I can, to fix the problems within our nation as he explained that the people that primarily brought about change through the Civil Rights Movement were students.”
The last major event of the tightly scheduled Monday was the visit to Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative. Students had studied Just Mercy earlier in the fall; many of them had been moved by the accounts of racial injustice in the book, but students wrote about how hearing Stevenson discuss those same cases in person provided a deeper and more complex meaning. All of the students had crafted and rehearsed questions for Stevenson, though they knew few would be chosen in the time allotted with the author.
“When he started to call on us for questions, I nearly dislocated my shoulder shooting my hand in the air,” wrote Ellanya Atwater. “By the grace of God, he picked me, and I got to ask him my question about the backlash he may have received from the black community because he works for the institution that has historically and continuously oppressed our race. He told me that there are going to be a million people telling me that I shouldn’t spend the rest of my life doing this, but it’s going to be the few people who really need your help who tell you that what you do is important. That makes everything worthwhile.”
Stevenson spoke about the challenges of working in the criminal justice system when most people categorically perceive defendants as guilty or innocent, without understanding other conditions. This led Gonzalez-Chavez to extrapolate, “I saw the error in how I often judged people without considering their prior experiences. I saw how I often failed to contextualize things before I interjected with my own opinion.”
Several students expressed relief and gratitude that Stevenson emphasized the ability to help people and affect change, even without consideration of grades or occupation. Although only five students were able to ask questions, many others remarked on the power of hearing Stevenson’s responses to their peers. Diamond Blue wrote that, after he answered her question, “everything Mr. Stevenson had said to me, completely made me feel stronger, and capable of doing anything.”
“As a teacher, I was pleased to see the students ask such nuanced, raw questions,” Cone said. “At one point, one of Bryan's assistants wiped tears from her eyes because she was so moved by what one of our students shared with Bryan.”
Afterward, the group gathered on the sidewalk outside EJI and debriefed. The emotions ran high, and a great number of students reflected on the elements of the trip that they perceived to be life-changing. As one student wrote, “After yesterday and today, speaking with all the inspirational people, we all felt a collective urge to go out and change the world. We said time and time again to not let go of this energy, the urge, and the momentum.”
“This year's trip was one of the most profound and positive experiences of my career,” Cone said. And judging from the hundred plus pages of student reflections, the trip will be remembered by many as a highlight of their educational lives, an ongoing source of inspiration and clarity.
The Public School Foundation’s funding allowed all interested students to participate in the experience, by covering fees for those who needed financial support. Multiple students noted their gratitude in their journals.
