There’s a Long Way to Go....

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Today was emotional, to say the least. After marching down the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the group debriefed everything we’d been feeling today and on this trip. Everyone felt so deeply about issues of injustice, people both black and white. There was such passion within the circle of people at the end of that bridge. We shared a collective sense of awe at what our people endured, and just how little has changed since the very “history” we came on this trip to learn about. This trip has shown me that hatred is something that is taught, which was extremely evident today. When we visited a confederate memorial and cemetery, it was immaculately kept. A few blocks over is the former house of “The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” Amelia Boynton Robinson, the house was boarded up, and looked abandoned. The fact that there are still people actively looking after fallen confederates and thus enabling/supporting supremacist ideals shows that hate is very well alive in the culture of Selma, Alabama, and other cities nationwide. We think of the Civil Rights Movement as something that happened so long ago, but sometimes fail to see that hate is very much still alive. 

 -Cici Osias, Park School

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