Day 2: The Necessity of Youth

Today was spent primarily in Atlanta. Today was a day of confronting the future and the first step in my journey of understanding how to go about carrying the mantle of civil rights activism. After a morning spent listening to a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr. and visiting the King Center next to the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, his father, and his grandfather preached, we continued to Georgia State University where we had three speakers. Glenn Eskew, a history professor at Georgia State; Tony Groom, a creative writing and literature professor at Kennesaw University; and Charles Person, the youngest Freedom Rider and a Vietnam veteran, were the three speakers to bless us today. Each gave me a different takeaway as to how to go about continuing the actualization of equality. All three emphasized the importance of youth involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and the importance that youth must play today.

I simply cannot transcribe all of these speaker’s lectures in one post, so I will just focus on each of their takeaways.

Dr. Eskew spoke of the historical background of the Civil Rights Movement and the role of students in it. In conversation afterward, Dr. Eskew made it clear what he saw as one tool to overcome the sustained struggles of the world. He pointed at each of us who gathered to speak to him and asked us the same two questions in his thick Southern accent: “Are you registered to vote? And do you go and vote?”

Prof. Grooms shared of his experience discussing with his wife’s family from Birmingham their experiences living in the segregated South, which inspired his historical novel “Bombingham”. In his research for his historical novel, Prof. Grooms sat down with an activist to discuss her past as a young activist marching on the streets of Birmingham. She did not remember what they marched for, when they marched, who marched, or anything else. All she remembered was that she marched because she “was so damn mad.” Emotions, Prof. Grooms said, are what motivate us. They are what stick around, even decades later when all the other details fade.

And lastly, Mr. Person spoke to us of the horrors he experienced on the Freedom Ride and the reality of the brutality that the Ku Klux Klan committed against those who sought to act according to the law of the land and utilize the legally integrated bus system. The savage beating he endured was juxtaposed by the heroism of him and the others who faced the Ku Klux Klan members. Dr. Allen was nice enough to offer the students on the tour a copy of Mr. Person’s memoir Buses Are a Comin’, which we were fortunate enough to get signed. In it, he wrote “For Matt, you have the potential to change the world.” Mr. Person brushed with death on the Freedom Ride at just 18, three years younger than I am now.

Mr. Person sincerely believes in the power of youth engagement, because he was a youth who was engaged in changing the society he lived in. Dr. Eskew reinforced that power, not just in the power of non-violent protest, but also at the poll box. And Prof. Grooms shared that one cannot act on sheer intellect alone, but there must be an emotional fire burning.

I pray today to have at least a fraction of the fire that burned in the hearts of those like Mr. Person. For their passion reshaped the world we live in dramatically, and it burned with a great abundance. That passion must extend in the poll boxes and when dialogue presents the opportunity. And youth is not a sign of inexperience, nor is it a weakness to experience intense emotions, for emotion requires no experience and the greater it burns, the more agency for change one has.

Matt Jenkins

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