Pittsburghers gain insights on Civil Rights Movement during Deep South tour
EducationClassrooms Without Borders

Pittsburghers gain insights on Civil Rights Movement during Deep South tour

'Having these kinds of experiences and being able to go on trips like this truly does bring you together'

Pittsburgh Public School students lead the way as Classrooms Without Borders participants cross the Edmud Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. (Photo courtesy of Tess Riesmeyer)
Pittsburgh Public School students lead the way as Classrooms Without Borders participants cross the Edmud Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. (Photo courtesy of Tess Riesmeyer)

Pittsburgh-area educators and students expanded their classrooms by 700 miles. The learning cohort traveled to Atlanta, Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, Memphis, Louisville and Cincinnati from June 16-24 to better understand the Civil Rights Movement.

Organized by Classrooms Without Borders, the nine-day seminar was “extraordinary,” Tess Riesmeyer, 56, said. “It was heartbreaking. It was joyful. It was everything.”

Riesmeyer is the co-head teacher of language arts and humanities at Sewickley Montessori Middle School.

Interacting with individuals intimately involved in the Civil Rights Movement was particularly impactful, she said, as conversations with Freedom Riders (activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated South) and Foot Soldiers (peaceful marchers) shared firsthand knowledge.

“I was [able] to hear history through the mouths of the people who made it,’” Riesmeyer said.

“Getting an opportunity to be in the places where things happened, and to actually talk to some of the Foot Soldiers that participated in the Civil Rights Movement, was eye-opening as to the level of humanity involved,” Northgate School District educator Regis McDevitt, 39, said. “You can only teach so much from the textbook.”

Listening to history makers and visiting memorials not only yielded insight about the “inner workings of the Civil Rights Movement,” but also underscored aspects not taught in school, Pittsburgh CAPA student Laila King, 16, said.

“I feel like in school they kind of talk about the Civil Rights Movement in a very general way,” she continued. “Going on this trip taught me more about how movements don’t just happen overnight — it’s multiple different small or big actions that contribute to an overall movement and overall change.”

About 20 Pittsburghers visited historic sites and museums. Along with touring the Ebenezer Baptist Church and Hebrew Benevolent Congregation in Atlanta, and the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, travelers marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Journeying through the South “felt like I was reading a book,” King said. “It’s like my eye was opened to all this new information.”

Several stops highlighted the horror experienced by those seeking greater freedoms.

“It was a very emotional experience to see all of these vile images of brutality, and what people had to go through in order to secure the very rights that I have today,” King said.

“The entire thing was amazing, but it was traumatic, and there were a lot of emotions, which is why it was so long,” Pittsburgh CAPA student A’Lani Hutson-Jarrett, 16, said of the seminar.

“There was so much information and we needed time to really think about the things that we were seeing.”

Throughout the trip, time was dedicated to process, journal and discuss each day’s discoveries, which Hutson-Jarrett found helpful.

“I am not a social butterfly,” she said. “I am not someone who likes to talk a lot. I’m not someone who goes out of my way to meet new people. So with this experience that just came with it.”

For the high schooler, the seminar didn’t only prompt connections with fellow travelers but new ties to family.

Inside The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration are jars of soil from various lynching sites across the United States.

“They had them all on display and there were stories about them,” Hutson-Jarrett said. “We didn’t expect to see things like that.”

After viewing the exhibit, the teen immediately exited the space and called her grandmother.

“I got my family history. I found out where we were from. I also found out a possible relative was most likely lynched,” she said.

Finding a personal connection to the past, Hutson-Jarrett said, gave her new insight.

“Though some may see it as degrading — the very explicit things we saw — I thought it was empowering because I was able to reach out and figure out when my family moved to where we are now,” she said.

Throughout the seminar, the teen’s understanding evolved.

“There were moments when we went to synagogues and, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, ‘What does this have to do with me? I don’t believe in this religion. This has nothing to do with me. I don’t need to learn about this.’ But hearing those stories, and understanding the experiences, and realizing this sounds like something that people of my color have been through — though it seems cliche — does bring us all together,” she said. “Students my age, I don’t think we realize that just yet.”

“Having these kinds of experiences and being able to go on trips like this truly does bring you together and enlightens you to a certain degree,” she continued. “It kind of gets rid of some of that ignorance that you might have in the back of your mind.”

Since returning to Pittsburgh, Hutson-Jarrett has continued writing in her notebook.

King has similarly internalized her learnings and said the trip allowed her to “be more comfortable in my own voice and speak out.”

McDevitt, who is preparing to teach American history from Reconstruction to the present, said he, too, is working on integrating the trip’s lessons.

For starters, he plans on filling his upcoming curriculum with many of the 800 images he photographed.

“The textbook only takes you so far,” he said.

Riesmeyer said that after returning to Pittsburgh she spent three days processing everything she experienced. Only now is she considering how best to retool next year’s lesson plans.

“There isn’t really a portion of my curriculum that this work isn’t going to have an impact on,” she said.

Riesmeyer teaches middle schoolers, but she said the trip’s values are relevant to learners of all ages.

“It’s important to understand how hard people fought for their right to simply be considered human. Any step that we take away from that is so horrifically wrong. And we can’t go back,” she said. “We have to see one another as full humans. Each and every person has something to bring.” PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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