MLK Scholars Program
News
A Legacy Lives On
Courtney Clemente, 4/30/2008
We Shall Overcome
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Continuing the Struggle
With a walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, the Martin Luther King Jr. scholars relived the march of their ancestors.
More than 40 years earlier, on March 7, 1965, voting rights marchers were violently confronted by law enforcement officers on a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. The law enforcement personnel attacked the nonviolent demonstrators in the presence of a multitude of news media, which brought the reality of the civil rights movement to television screens across the United States.
The Ithaca College Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar Program civil rights tour enables freshman scholars to experience the historical significance of a social change movement that affected the entire country. By learning more about King and his work, the scholars develop an understanding of the importance of carrying on social justice in today’s world. The scholars traveled last October to Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, Alabama.
Throughout their five-day trip, they visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, the Rosa Park Museum, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth home, among other sites. Malinda B. Smith, assistant director of the program, believes it is important that scholars begin their four-year experience with this trip.
“The civil rights tour introduces the scholars to the life and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.,” says Smith. “Through this trip the scholars acquire a comprehensive understanding and experience firsthand the power and the significance of the civil rights movement.”
The highlight for many scholars was the opportunity to meet civil rights activist Joanne Bland, cofounder and director of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, Alabama, where she works to promote civil and human rights and increase voter awareness. In 1961, when Bland was only eight years old, she attended a freedom and voters’ rights meeting presided over by Martin Luther King Jr., and marched in Bloody Sunday and Turn Around Tuesday. At 11 years old, Bland was the youngest person to be jailed in these demonstrations.
Listening to Bland’s firsthand account of her participation in the civil rights struggle, the scholars realized their own moral imperative to take action and stand up against injustices in today’s society.
“Joanne showed us that it wasn’t okay to be silent, that you had to be active; we have to be the messengers of our generation to inform people who aren’t aware, or who don’t feel as strongly as we do about these issues,” says Marcos Ferrer ’10.
“As far as being active, she’s still not done; she’s still active in Selma, and she really encouraged us to step it up,” says Sharlene Nichols ’10. “The potential we have to bring about change -- like she did when she was young -- we all have that potential, and she really encouraged us to take advantage of it.”
Originally published in Fuse: A Legacy Lives On.