2008 Civil Rights Journey (INTRODUCTION)

CARRYING THE FUTURE

Within my family folklore there is a story about the time my dad and mom (something like seven months pregnant with my brother) climbed Bowman’s Tower. Bowman’s Tower is 125 feet tall and in 1972 there was no elevator. I never understood why she did it, and it doesn’t really matter, Bowman’s Tower has always been central to my understanding of my family.

Bowman’s Tower is located in Bucks County, PA, a place that figures heavily in my personal narrative and family history. My parents first went to Bucks on their “mini-moon” – a concept that didn’t even have a catchy name back then – and fell in love with it. They returned frequently throughout their marriage and it is the scene of many of my favorite memories. Aside from the countless weekends I spent with my family shopping, eating, canoeing and seeing musicals at the Bucks County Playhouse, there were certain watershed moments in my life in which the area figured prominently. We stayed in Bucks County the night before I caught the bus to Long Lake for the first time. I had lunch with my parents in Bucks County before I drove to Mason for the start of my crucial second year of college. SMS first told me he loved me in Bucks County (actually it was across the river in Lambertville, NJ, but it was close enough). SMS and I got married in Bucks County, which allowed us to share one of our favorite places with the all the people we love. In 2006, Mr. Happy and I scattered my father ashes in Bucks County.

And even though I never climbed Bowman’s Tower myself, in utero or out, it is a resounding symbol of what was important to the people who raised me: history, travel, first-hand experiences, beauty … The story of my mother’s climb was never far from my mind as I journeyed this past week, carrying my own first-child in utero, through the American south with 90 Jewish 16-year-olds on a Civil Rights odyssey. We explored the connections between whites, blacks, religion and rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s and 60s. I hope this journey will be as indicative of the family I am about to create as Bowman’s Tower and Bucks County was of the family that created me.

TO SEE A DAY BY DAY PHOTO OVERVIEW CLICK HERE.
TO SEE ALL OF MY JOURNEY PHOTOS CLICK HERE.
TO READ PART 1 :: BEING AN ADULT CLICK HERE.
TO READ PART 2 :: THE POWER OF HERE AND NOW CLICK HERE.
TO READ PART 3 :: PROTESTING THE PROTESTER CLICK HERE.

2008 Civil Rights Journey :: Day By Day In Pics

Monday – Atlanta, GA
Lunch: Kosher Deli Sandwiches
Dinner: Kosher BBQ

Leo Frank Lynching

Dr. Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta/Ebenezer Baptist

Name Project/AIDS Quilt

Emory University

Reverend GH Williams

Tuesday – Montgomery and Birmingham, AL
Lunch: Kosher Deli Sandwhiches
Dinner: Kosher Pasta and Salad

Reverend Graetz/Rosa Parks Museum

Southern Poverty Law Center

Freedom Park with Reverend Woods

Wednesday – Tupelo, MS and Memphis, TN
Lunch: Kids were on their own, Adults had ribs at the Rendez-Vous
Dinner: Kids had Pizza, I had a cheeseburger and fries

Birthplace of Elvis

The "Adults" on Beale Street

Mississippi River

Smithsonian Rock and Soul

Alfred’s on Beale Street

Thursday – Memphis, TN
Lunch: French Dip
Dinner: Kosher Fried Chicken

Sun Studios

Graceland

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel

2008 Civil Rights Journey (Part 1)

BEING THE ADULT

Prior to leaving on the trip I had shared with my colleagues that I was pregnant. My first trimester was not yet complete, but I wanted to make sure that they understood my behavior (especially related to food) was because of my new pregnancy – not because I was anorexic, bulimic, depressed or rude. During the first trimester my relationship to food could only be described as erratic and impulsive: sometimes I wanted NOTHING to do with it and then all of a sudden I would need to eat IMMEDIATELY. Or, on more than one occasion, I would happily be eating a meal and then, inexplicably, I would need to be as far away from food as possible. It was a terrible idea to get between food and me. At book club several weeks ago someone tried to “ration” my portion of French toast because she wasn’t sure how many more people were on the way. Without missing a beat, I announced that she absolutely could NOT ration my French toast because I was pregnant! That caught a few people off guard! I was also very suggestible – an advertiser’s best friend.

So I shared my news, slightly prematurely, with colleagues and I’m very glad I did. They were so understanding and always made sure that I got to go to the front of the buffet line. They also let me sneak away for a burger when everyone else was eating pizza. It also led to a number of very touching conversations, especially with the fathers in the group. At one point I shared with one of them that I was nervous about being a mom because I was so used to being a daughter – he assured me that it was possible to be both. But the transition to mom was somewhat exaggerated by the need to chaperon 90 kids over the course of the week. I kept thinking: “When did I become the adult?”

I remember my school trips fondly: there was the Washington D.C. trip, an east coast staple; the bizarre trip to the Christian camp that was also a ski trip during which my arch nemesis spent an hour and half one night crying to me in a bathroom and promptly went back to ignoring me the next day; the trip to French Canada during which I made PW tell our host family I was allergic to peas because they served them on a hamburger drenched in gravy; the trip to Stratford to see Shakespeare; the amazing trip to study theatre and history in London and the life-changing Habitat for Humanity trip to Rochester, NY. I knew the trip we were on in the South was just as monumental as any of these, if not more so, and I was excited about the experience, but it was completely surreal being the authority figure. I kept thinking, did my teachers lay in their hotel rooms watching whatever the 1980s equivalent of Sex in the City was and talking about us?!

To be honest, I do not have a good track record as an authority figure. While in college I worked at a summer program for high school students. I enjoyed my summer there but I didn’t get great feed-back as a counselor and I know exactly why that was: I was a really well-behaved kid and I had no idea how to deal with kids who weren’t. I actually did not understand them in a very basic way. That is still true today. As a teenager I did not break rules; I did not break curfew; I was not rude to my elders. When faced with that behavior I develop quite an edge. There was no place for my edge on this trip. I was sent with the express purpose of getting to know the kids so that they would feel connected to me and therefore connected to the alumni program that I run. I wasn’t supposed to be the heavy and yet, at the same time, well, being the heavy is sort of in my nature. It took me a couple days, but I was able to work it out in the end. I figured it was all good when one of the kids I caught breaking curfew early in the week came up to me at baggage claim on Friday, hugged me, and thanked me for the trip. I’m still not sure how I became the adult.

The Justice League of Chaperons

2008 Civil Rights Journey (Part 2)

THE POWER OF HERE AND NOW

One of the best parts of the trip was that we met with people who lived, shaped and experienced history and we stood with them where history happened. I am a big reader and I love historical fiction – I love delving into a world that existed long before I did and being swept away by the narrative, but there is nothing that compares to talking to someone who was there – and actually being “there” with them.

We met with three pastors – two black and one white – the black preachers where both close associates of Martin Luther King Jr. and the white preacher was a friend of Rosa Parks.

We met Reverend Williams in Atlanta, GA where he is a park ranger at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. He marched with Dr. King and had close associations with many Civil Rights workers who were murdered. We met with Reverend Graetz in Montgomery, AL at the Rosa Parks Library and Museum that is located on the corner where Ms. Parks made her historic stand by staying seated. We met with Reverend Woods who led us through Freedom Park/Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, AL on land just outside the 16th Street Baptist Church, famous for a bombing in which four young girls were murdered in a Klan bombing in 1963.


We heard stories we had all heard before, but this time we heard them from people who were there. I cannot overstate how important this distinction is. One of our students likened it to meeting with Holocaust survivors and went on to say that he was aware that he and his classmates were the last generation that would be able to have this kind of one-on-one live contact with these people. While it is truer of Holocaust survivors than it is for Civil Rights Activists (many were young when they were active in the 50s and 60s and will most likely live to speak to another generation of high school students or two) it was an eye-opening experience for our kids to meet with people who were routinely called the N word, were shot with water hoses by police, whose children were the first to integrate schools and who were jailed countless times for exercising their right to free speech.

The fact that two weeks prior to the journey our nation had elected our first African American president was not lost anyone. At the end of each preacher’s speech one of our students asked each man the same question: “When you were fighting for equality, did you think you would live to see the day when a black man would become President of the United States?” And they all answered in a relatively similar manner: No. They all believed it would happen some time, but the pace of the movement that they saw, the horror of what they experienced and the setbacks they witnessed time and time again led them to believe that change would be too slow to show this kind of progress in their lifetimes. They were all happy to be wrong, but they also shared in common just a tiny bit of skepticism, or maybe it was realism: they told us being black wasn’t enough. They felt like they didn’t know Barack OBama well enough and they said they were reserving judgment to see what kind of policies he enacted. I think those dialogues were very important for our students to hear.

But the trip wasn’t just about African Americans and their struggles; we visited the headquarters of The AIDS Memorial Quilt and met with a gay man living with AIDS. He was a fascinating speaker who shared openly and frankly with our students. We talked about the politics of AIDS and what it means to be a disenfranchised group in today’s society. The fact that California Proposition 8 had passed two weeks prior to our trip was not lost on our students either, or our guest speaker.

I don’t know anyone personally who has died of AIDS – this doesn’t lessen its impact on my life. While my father was alive during the Holocaust and both my parents lived through the Civil Rights Movement and my brother was born in the shadow of the Vietnam War, I have a clear memory of the AIDS crises. I’m not sure I would remember the start of it so distinctly if it weren’t for the appetite suppressant AYDS, which my father used to go through by the case. I remember the jokes that were made relating to the unfortunate coincidence in names between the disease and the diet pills and I remember my dad stocking up on the stuff for fear that they would take it off the market (eventually they did).

Later, when I became sexually active, AIDS was never far from my mind and I have memories of nervous visit to free testing facilities and the stress of waiting a week for the results. My friends and I used to remind ourselves as we walked in to get our results: “Negative is Good; Negative is Good.” But of course, our students don’t know a time before AIDS, and they also don’t know of a time when the syndrome was a certain and quick death sentence. The man who spoke to us talked about what it was like to have sex before anyone knew anything about it and he spoke to us about his choice to remain celibate since his diagnosis. He shared that his first ever test was positive so he has no idea when or from whom he caught it. He shared with us the various illnesses he has been miraculously able to fight off and he told us of the friends he lost to those same disorders. He told us what it was like to be told you had 18-months to live and then to outlive that prognosis by 14+ years. There’s no telling what impact his talk had on our students, but I know they won’t forget it anytime soon.


We also took a tour of the quilt’s headquarters and learned about its history. Our wonderful tour guide, Janece, the project’s communication director, walked the students through the warehouse and talked about how the project was started. She told the group about the need many people had to mourn the loss of their gay loved ones because often parents of those who died of AIDS were embarrassed and ashamed and didn’t allow their child’s community to visit them in the hospital or attend their funerals. I thought of all the people I had lost and shudder at the thought of not being able to say a proper goodbye. I also thought about my brother’s old roommate. The roommate had already been diagnosed with AIDS when they lived together in LA in the late 90s. This was prior to things like free long distance on cell phones and constant contact via email and Facebook. When my brother moved to San Francisco they lost touch and it was years later, through a mutual acquaintance, that my brother found out his former roommate had died. The roommate's parents had swept him away, wouldn’t let anyone see him in the hospital and did not tell his friends about the funeral. I have rarely seen my brother shaken, but when he called me to share this news it was clear he was beyond upset. Although it was only the first day of the trip and I didn’t know any of the students in the small group I was with, I felt compelled to share this story – I didn’t want them to think that AIDS and the bigotry that was associated with it was history – I wanted them to know that what they were learning about things that directly impacted my life – a living breathing soul that they knew. My voice quivered as I shared and I’m not sure I made my point but by bearing witness I felt I had done an important thing. (To read more about gay rights and my brother's roommate from his perspective, click here.)

2008 Civil Rights Journey (Part 3)

PROTESTING THE PROTESTER
One of the highlights of the trip was our time at the National Civil Rights Museum that is located in Memphis, TN at The Lorraine Hotel. Having seen countless images of the hotel it was quite surreal to be standing outside the balcony where Dr. King was shot.


The museum itself was fascinating and its placement on our itinerary, on our last afternoon together, was perfect: the first two days were fairly tightly scheduled and full of heavy content; the third day was all about rock ‘n’ roll and the students had plenty of free-time; by the fourth day the students had had a break from the denser content and had blown off some steam. As we walked through the museum at our own pace the students asked the adults some really insightful questions and we had impromptu discussions in small groups that showed the students had begun to process all that they had seen. You could tell that they felt good about knowing some of the names and stories they saw in the exhibits and it seemed like they really felt ownership over the material.

But there’s something else going on at The Lorraine Motel: there is Jacqueline Smith.


Ms. Smith has been protesting the existence of Civil Rights Museum since 1988 when she was removed for her home in The Lorraine Motel where she was the last tenant. She is protesting the existence of a museum that is “dedicated to the past” in the place where she thinks a homeless shelter or clinic or educational outreach center should be. She is protesting gentrification and commerce that she feels go against the ideals for which Martin Luther King Jr. died. In speaking with her though, as our guides encouraged us to do, it was hard not to see that most of her protest stemmed from her personal beef – she had been kicked out of her home and she was mad. She offered her services to the museum, she was rebuffed and she was mad. Some of our students were moved by her protest; others were saddened by the futility of it. I was hurt.

When she was talking about the need for an education center one of our students mentioned to her that the museum did have an education program and likened it to the Holocaust museum in Israel where he had participated in an educational program that had made an extremely positive impact on him. She clearly wasn’t talking about that kind of education program: she wanted job training, she wanted reading and writing help, she wanted the poor of Memphis to be lifted up (just as Dr. King had wanted). Her point was that Dr. King didn’t come to The Lorraine Motel to be shot – he came to The Lorraine Motel to help sanitation workers live a better life and it was her contention that that was the kind of work that should still be taking place at the site. But I think our student’s point was spot on: a job readiness center might help a few thousand, maybe tens of thousand of Memphis locals, but a museum education center that is visited by people from all over the world has the possibility of carrying Dr. King’s message and methods into the next generation. I couldn’t help myself, I asked her about that.

“What if someone comes here and is changed by it – changed enough to go on and change the world?” I asked, maybe not as eloquently as that, but something like it.

“What if, what if, what if?” she parroted back, “I can’t see ‘what if,’ can you see ‘what if?’”

It was a pat response and one I’m sure she had given a million times but it really hurt my heart, there’s no other way to describe it. We had just taken 90 16-year-olds on a journey throughout the south in an effort to show them how small actions of the people who came before them had had huge ramifications. Our journey was meant to inspire them to take actions in their own lives that would positively impact those around them and those who came after them. And here was a woman, claiming to represent the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, claiming to be more authentic than the educators and historians who put together the museum, telling our students and telling me that “what if” doesn’t matter. As an administrator who spent years providing arts education to New York City school children, I can tell you, sometimes “What if” is the only thing that matters.