Can You Imagine...

The following blog post was written by Camilo Mejia while participating in UUSC's annual Freedom Summer: Civil Rights Journey. Mejia is a nationally recognized peace activist and the first Iraq war veteran to publicly refuse to return to combat.

Day 3 of the Civil Rights Journey started at 7 a.m. with a traditional southern breakfast at the Capitol Inn's café. By 8 a.m. we were well on our way to Selma, Ala., where our day would begin with a visit to The National Voting Rights Museum and Institute.

The 45-minute bus ride to Selma wasn't long enough to finish the Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1985 episode on the battle against segregation in the lunch counters and downtown stores of Nashville, Tenn. Still, it was a great introduction to a day that would take us down the path of resistance to segregation in two historical events: Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery March.

Sam Walker, our guide at The National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, gave us a lively presentation about the main events, such as the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the shutting down of registration centers in order to prevent African American citizens from voting, which launched the two historic marches. We then learned how the marches were organized and carried out, initially viewed as setbacks by some, but then leading to two crucial victories in the movement: a federal judge's decision to uphold the protesters' right to march and force the government to provide protection for the marchers.

Our second stop was the most powerful of the day. It seemed a bit odd, as I got out of the bus at The Slavery and Civil War Museum, that one of the guides told me to "get over there with the men, against the wall!" At first I didn't make much of it, but then she told us (men and women) to bow our heads and to avoid making eye contact with her. What followed was an incredibly intense interactive reenactment of the treatment of African slaves, from their capture in Africa all the way to slave markets in the United States.

"Can you imagine..." asked the guide in a dark and scary chamber that resembled the belly of a slave ship, "... being taken away from your family; never again seeing your wives; never again seeing your husbands, your children, your home, only because of the color of your skin?" "Can you imagine..." she continued, "... being chained to a person who's dying or dead? Can you imagine one of your friends being cut up in pieces and then fed to you, only because of the color of your skin?"

The tour continued through more rooms, each challenging us more and more not only to absorb the history in an abstract way, but also to physically put ourselves into situations that made us feel just a tiny bit closer to the horrible realities that were the lives of slaves.

More traditional southern food and stops at historical sites in Selma followed our visit, but that visit and the intense realism of it was by far the greatest lesson of day three of this amazing journey. If all people were able to visit The Slavery Museum and get but a small taste of the inherent cruelty, violence, and brutality behind racism and its byproducts (slavery, lynching, segregation, etc.), I think the struggle for equality would be much easier to win. If only we could educate people; if we used history to learn from our mistakes instead of perpetuating them by ignoring it, I think the world would be a much better place.

Can you imagine?