CSL - Week 6

This blog is mis-titled, as my 6th week was not spent at the CSL, or at Stetson, or even in Florida for that matter. For the past week, I've been traveling around the deep South (which is further north than Florida ... haha that never gets old :D ) tracing the Civil Rights Movement with students from USF, Stetson Law School, and our very own Stetson undergrad.

We toured Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee; Oxford, Mississippi; and Birmingham, Selma, Anniston, and Montgomery, Alabama. We visited numerous Civil Rights museums, and met and shared meals with veterans of the movement, including those who had participated in the lunch counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides. We cried at the motel where MLK, Jr. was murdered and the church in Birmingham where four innocent girls died in a bombing, walked across the bridge that began part of the famous attempted walk from Selma to Montgomery on Bloody Sunday. We ate lots of fried chicken, and drank gallons and gallons of sweet tea (you think I'm kidding?) ... not that I minded.

Amidst the whirlwind of activity, I discovered an entirely new perspective on the Movement, having seen the places where so much history was made and so much freedom gained. Something struck me during the numerous conversations we'd had with the veterans. So many of them didn't realize the vast significance of what they were doing at the time. So many of them understood the potentially devastating consequences of their actions, and yet acted anyway. And so many of them, their fight apparently completed with the passing of the Civil Rights Act, continued on with their lives, having changed history through bravery and community. It made me think. What will future generations say as they look back upon us? What will be the moments that define us - and will we recognize them when they come?

People sacrificed their physical comfort, their safety, their pride, their jobs, their education, even their lives to fight for what they KNEW was right, what they KNEW they had every right to pursue.

And what are we doing?

I will end with three quotations:

"Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."

"If not us, who? If not now, when?"

"They said to one another, 'Behold, here cometh the dreamer ... Let us slay him ... and we shall see what becomes of his dreams."