Keeping History Alive in the Everyday

Written by Nancy Nienhuis, a participant in the fourth annual Civil Rights Journey.

Imagine walking into your polling station and before someone hands you the ballot, they tell you you have to answer a couple of questions. "Okay," you say. And then they ask you, "How many bubbles in a bar of soap?" and "How many feathers on a chicken?" You can't answer, so they tell you that you can't vote.

Those questions were actually on the test they used to give blacks in the south in order to remove them from the voting lists. Whites didn't have to pass the tests. This is just one of the many things I learned this week during the Civil Rights Journey.

These days have been packed with information -- did you know that during the Montgomery Bus Boycott many bus drivers were laid off and became police officers?!? We've walked where Dr. King walked, we've talked to people who knew him. We've even heard from Mr. Nelson, the man who used to cut his hair.

On this trip, history not only comes alive, it talks to you. I'll never think about civil rights in the same way. Some things we've encountered made us shake our heads with wonder at how inhumanely people can treat each other -- Birmingham police turning dogs on children, for example. And other things give us hope. The heroes of the movement aren't the ones who made the changes we know now. The changes were made by everyday people, by people like me and people like you who, when the time came, chose to do something instead of walk away.

More than anything else, this trip and the history I've been introduced to in such a personal way remind me that I keep the fight alive and keep us all moving forward when I choose in every small moment of a regular day to do the right thing. No matter how tired, I must do this. If 500 people can March from Selma to Montgomery under threat of death, I can do this.