Their spirits live on through us

As I walked through the Civil Rights Memorial, I wanted to crawl onto my mother’s lap and rest my head on her shoulder. I wanted to feel her hands rubbed on back just like she used to do when I was younger. I wanted her to take away the pain that I felt from reading the names of innocent people who had been brutally murdered for unjust reasons. People like Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise MacNair, and Emmett Till whose only crime was being born black.  At one point, I got so frustrated from reading the the stories of these people that I stopped reading. I was mentally exhausted. Learning about all of the people who sacrificed their lives for equality forced me to ask myself what have I done to make their sacrifice worthwhile. When I couldn’t find the answer to that question, I was so ashamed that I wanted to go back New Jersey and returned to my daily routine.

Thankfully, I was able to lean on the shoulders of my SBP brothers. At least once a day, we come together as a group to debrief and express our feelings. From our small convocations, I learned that I owe it to everyone who participated in the People’s Movement to read their stories no matter how hard and tragic their stories may be. With the support of my brothers, I am able to continue on with this trip. Perhaps the most important thing that I’ve learned so far is that people like Emmett Till and Jonathan Daniels and everyone who was murdered in the fight for equality are not dead. Emmett Till lives in the hearts of the people like Morris Dees,the founder of Southern Poverty Law Center, Bryan Stevenson, the founder of Equal Justice Initiative, me, you and everyone who is striving to make this a world a better place.
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