For 11 DeMatha Catholic High School juniors and seniors, summer school took on a different meaning as they participated in a weeklong course that focused on important civil rights landmarks in five cities across nine states and encompassing more than 2,000 miles.
This past June, the Trinitarian-sponsored high school for boys in Hyattsville, Maryland offered its first ever “Road to Civil Rights” summer course. The goal of the course was to help students experience first-hand what they have read about or studied in their classes.
“This is education beyond the geography of DeMatha and beyond the time students spend here,” said Dr. Daniel McMahon, principal of the school. “Our kids were able to experience those places that our history teachers have told them about and to see the impact they had and still have.”
McMahon and Pat Smith, an English teacher and director of special projects at the school, put the trip together and acted as teachers, chaperones and chauffeurs for the students.
McMahon said the idea for the project came from years of teaching about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Written in 1952, Ellison’s novel looked at the struggles faced by African Americans in the first part of the 20th century. It has been hailed as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the last century.
“Pat and I have been teaching Ellison’s Invisible Man for quite some time, so this is a very long passion project, but it also seems particularly timely,” McMahon said. “It turned out to be an extraordinary experience for our kids who asked wonderful questions.”
McMahon said he was especially proud of the fact that “we were a fully integrated group” that included “three students who identified as white, three who identified as mixed race and five who identified as Black.”
The students who participated in the trip were seniors Aidan Ankrah, Kai Blackman, Reuben Ezi, Henry Lawrence and Daren Pefok and juniors Chase Alexander, Kevin Carey, Nico DeLeon, Devin Lewis, Henry Rutz and Daniel Smith.
“The fact that they decided to join us meant they already had a sense they wanted to see places they learned about or read about in their history classes. They wanted to experience the sacredness of those spaces,” Smith said. “They wanted to get stories that aren’t in their history books, to get a deeper understanding of what many people did – and do – for civil rights.”
The students traveled by bus to cities and places prominent in the struggle for civil rights.
The stops included Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Students from that university were among those who participated in the nonviolent sit-ins that eventually led to Nashville being one of the first major cities in the South to desegregate lunch counters. Notable graduates of that historically Black university include civil rights leaders W. E. B. Du Bois, Diane Nash, Ida B. Wells and Rep. John Lewis.
DeMatha students also visited the National Civil Rights Museum located at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. It was at the site 55 years ago that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
In late March 1968, Dr. King traveled to Memphis to support Black sanitation public works employees who were on strike seeking higher wages and better working conditions. On April 4, Dr. King, standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel, was mortally wounded by a gunshot fired by James Earl Ray. He was taken to St. Joseph Hospital, where after emergency surgery he was pronounced dead.
McMahon noted that the students learned that Ray knew where Dr. King was staying because “at that time everyone knew there were only a few places (in Memphis) where Blacks could stay.”
Students then proceeded to Selma, Alabama, the starting point of the three now-famous Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. While in Selma, the students walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Designated a national landmark, the bridge was the site of the March 7, 1965 “Bloody Sunday" attack where white law enforcement officers used nightsticks and tear gas to violently disperse peaceful protesters participating in one of the 54-mile Selma to Montgomery marches.
Traveling on to Montgomery, Alabama, students were able to tour the Legacy Museum – which chronicles the history of inequality suffered by African Americans from slavery to modern-day racism – and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, sometimes called the National Lynching Memorial, honoring and remembering the Black victims of lynching.
Senior Kai Blackman said that what struck him the most was his visit to the lynching memorial.
“I didn’t know that were that many” who were lynched, he said. “It’s like part of my history that I have to understand – my family and people who look like my family went through this. It puts everything in perspective and really opened my eyes.”
He added that he may write about his “Road to Civil Rights” experience when it comes time to write his college essay.
They also visited the City of St. Jude Catholic Parish, a 36-acre “city within a city” that includes a school, hospital and Catholic church. Established almost 90 years ago as a Catholic mission to Montgomery’s African American community, it was created as its own city so that it would not be subjected to Montgomery’s segregation laws. It hosted a concert and provided food and respite to the Selma to Montgomery marchers.
“It might have been the space the kids were most impacted by,” Smith said. “There were displays with photos without any editing or censoring, and the kids were really taken aback by the hate and the opposition (the marchers) faced.”
From Montgomery, the students proceeded to the final stop on class tour – Atlanta. There, they explored the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and visited Morehouse College, an historically Black men’s liberal arts college.
Junior Nico DeLeon said after visiting all the memorials, museums and historic places, he was “surprised by how rich this history is.”
“It shocked me to learn about how much that went on that people do not know about,” he said. “Since the trip, I have been a little bit more considerate of people and take into consideration that all people are considered equal.”
