EJI helped me rekindle my interest

Today was inspiring and hopeful. After a quick breakfast, we headed to the Greyhound bus station in Alabama. There we had a mini group project. We were split into groups of 3 and each group was supposed to find a blurb about a Freedom Rider and create a monument out of themselves to commemorate that Freedom Rider. The one that my group chose was Reverend James Lawson. He was Methodist Minister who trained the Nashville students Gandhi's nonviolent philosophy. Reverend Lawson believed that nonviolence could lead to integration. As a group, one of us sat with a book as another tried to take her book away, and the other held fists up behind the sitting girl. It was interesting hearing information on different people and how what their role was in the movement, as well as seeing how they portrayed the activist and their ideas through their monument.
   
After, we came to the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI, founded by Bryan Stevenson. There, we watched a short video about death row and mass incarceration and how this non profit organization has helped to take people off of death row. I believe so far they have saved 115 people in Alabama. After, we had an overview of the process that death row convicts go through and had the chance to ask questions. We took a group picture in front of the building, and as we were walking away, Traci saw someone walking across the street. It was Bryan Stevenson. So we got really excited, or at least I did, and he crossed the street and took a photo with us quickly since he had someplace to go. EJI helped me rekindle my interest in creating a better judicial system. It made me want to read Just Mercy again. The key point that came out of this experience was to spread awareness that 1 in 3 black people are incarcerated and that this is a problem.

We walked on and acknowledged some historical plaques, an example being slave trade markets, as we got to the the Civil Rights Memorial Center. The center, which was a museum, focused specifically on 40 lost lives during the Civil Rights Movement. We looked at some of the blurbs of these people and watched a video focused on some of the victims, like Emmett Till and Viola Liuzzo, and came to the Wall of Tolerance. There I typed my name into a touch screen type of computer, which projected the name on to the wall. I pledged that I would devote my life to fight for "justice, equality, and human rights." We exited the museum after some of us bought some items from the gift shop and spent some time at the monument that was near the museum. We also took a group picture there too.
   
We ate lunch from Burger King or Wendy's and drove to a buffet in Meridian, Mississippi to meet Roscoe Jones. He spoke about his time with Freedom Schools and talked about his overall time in the movement. There was question and answering time. Some found his statements to be agreeable and disagreeable when he was asked about what he thought about the Black Lives Matter movement. But overall, his key point was to fight for something you believe in.

We left the buffet and watched a movie, which I think was called Ghost of Mississippi. We arrived at Quality Inn. We put our bags in our rooms and had a discussion on how we felt on the trip/at the moment and our group dynamic. It was interesting how we felt differently about our group and at the given moment, positively and negatively. After the conversation, we went upstairs to our rooms.

Tomorrow will be a long day, but I hope that we will all be able to make it through, mentally and physically.

Nina Feliciano, The Park School