Molly Shore
Seventh-graders at Luther Burbank Middle School got a bitter taste
of racial injustice when they experienced what it was like to be a
black child during the years of the segregated South.
On Wednesday, teachers Jennifer Meglemre, Barbara Weiss and Lisa
Raluy set the stage for a Civil Rights Day program when they divided
the children into groups of black and white students attending school
in the South and marching in a protest rally.
The boys' locker room became a 1930s black classroom with
inadequate equipment, books and supplies, while in a newly-integrated
high school of the '50s, white students taunted black students who
arrived there.
By the time they got to the protest rally, the students were
emotionally charged.
"Give us freedom," shouted student Diana Grossman.
Her words were repeated by a chorus of other seventh-graders as
they marched across the campus and into the school auditorium.
There, they watched a video of Martin Luther King Jr. giving his
famous 1963 speech, "I Have a Dream," on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial.
Guest speaker Randy Thompson told students about his father Ray
Thompson, who was a TV newscaster in Phoenix in the 1960s, and his
interviews of civil rights leaders King and Malcolm X, as well as
George Wallace, Alabama's segregationist governor.
Vahe Avedisian, 12, who said he has never experienced prejudice or
discrimination, said the day's events taught him and his friends how
blacks suffered and were treated differently.
"We are all equal," Vahe concluded, "no matter what color, race or
religion."
During Thompson's presentation, he asked if the students had heard
of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and his recent remarks that led some to
accuse him of supporting segregation. None of the students said they
had heard of the politician.
