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News & Photos
Civil Rights Tours Make Teachers Better Role Models
In early January faculty members Kate Hailstone and George Webb stood in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, trying to absorb the significance the place. Four young girls were killed there in September 1963 during a racially motivated bombing. One was 11, slightly older than Webb’s fourth-graders are now.
Hailstone and Webb have seen such powerful sights before.
They’ve seen the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. The Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, Alabama, where police attacked hundreds of civil rights marchers in 1965. Money, Mississippi, where black man Emmett Till was lynched for allegedly looking at a white woman in 1955.
Hailstone and Webb have now taken six civil rights tours, each with diverse groups from the Ira and Mary Zepp Center for Nonviolence and Peace Education at McDaniel College. Colleague Patrice Preston went along the first time.
“The fact that we’ve gone six years now makes [the experience] richer,” said Webb. “We’ve been to the same cities and we learn something new every time.” He is quick to cite this example: “Rosa Parks didn’t start the Montgomery bus boycott. Martin Luther King didn’t start it. Joanne Robinson started the boycott. That’s the stuff you don’t read about.”
“A big thing that I bring back is the passion I’m exposed to when I’m there,” said Webb. He and tour members have met civil rights pioneers who are still active in their 70s and 80s. This time they talked to a congregant who belonged to 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.
“Unless you do these trips, you don’t know what you don’t know,” added Hailstone. Growing up in England, she knew absolutely nothing about the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn’t until she moved to Maryland “that I heard language of hate toward black people,” she said.
The Civil Rights Movement fascinates Hailstone and at the same time horrifies her. She will never forget touring Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till was murdered. “The atmosphere of that town has never changed. It was the most unwelcoming, unloving atmosphere I’ve ever felt.” Added Webb, “You could feel something really horrible happened there.”
The most stirring moment for Webb came in Memphis, peering into the hotel room where Martin Luther King, Jr. spent his last night. “That hit me very hard. I always put him on a pedestal. This brought him down to man status for me.”
Webb is trained in Kingian nonviolence, a philosophy he brings to his classroom. The tours have helped him appreciate the courage and discipline it took civil rights activists to “follow the training in extreme circumstances. It blows me away.”
While there are no extreme circumstances in his fourth-grade classroom, Webb uses the training daily for problem reconciliation. And he models what he teaches. “Kids watch everything we do. They’re going to emulate us and watch our actions,” he said.
Hailstone’s second graders benefit from her travels in more subtle ways. “It’s been a personal journey for me more than anything. It’s made me more patient, it’s made me a better thinker, and it’s given me tools to help with class dynamics.”
“I don’t teach Martin Luther King Day because everyday is everybody’s day,” Hailstone added.
The most poignant moment of Webb and Hailstone’s 2011 tour was, said Hailstone, “coming home and finding out what had happened in Tucson. I was like, wow, for every two steps forward, we’re taking one step back.”
In early January faculty members Kate Hailstone and George Webb stood in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, trying to absorb the significance the place. Four young girls were killed there in September 1963 during a racially motivated bombing. One was 11, slightly older than Webb’s fourth-graders are now.
Hailstone and Webb have seen such powerful sights before.
They’ve seen the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. The Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, Alabama, where police attacked hundreds of civil rights marchers in 1965. Money, Mississippi, where black man Emmett Till was lynched for allegedly looking at a white woman in 1955.
Hailstone and Webb have now taken six civil rights tours, each with diverse groups from the Ira and Mary Zepp Center for Nonviolence and Peace Education at McDaniel College. Colleague Patrice Preston went along the first time.
“The fact that we’ve gone six years now makes [the experience] richer,” said Webb. “We’ve been to the same cities and we learn something new every time.” He is quick to cite this example: “Rosa Parks didn’t start the Montgomery bus boycott. Martin Luther King didn’t start it. Joanne Robinson started the boycott. That’s the stuff you don’t read about.”
“A big thing that I bring back is the passion I’m exposed to when I’m there,” said Webb. He and tour members have met civil rights pioneers who are still active in their 70s and 80s. This time they talked to a congregant who belonged to 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963.
“Unless you do these trips, you don’t know what you don’t know,” added Hailstone. Growing up in England, she knew absolutely nothing about the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn’t until she moved to Maryland “that I heard language of hate toward black people,” she said.
The Civil Rights Movement fascinates Hailstone and at the same time horrifies her. She will never forget touring Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till was murdered. “The atmosphere of that town has never changed. It was the most unwelcoming, unloving atmosphere I’ve ever felt.” Added Webb, “You could feel something really horrible happened there.”
The most stirring moment for Webb came in Memphis, peering into the hotel room where Martin Luther King, Jr. spent his last night. “That hit me very hard. I always put him on a pedestal. This brought him down to man status for me.”
Webb is trained in Kingian nonviolence, a philosophy he brings to his classroom. The tours have helped him appreciate the courage and discipline it took civil rights activists to “follow the training in extreme circumstances. It blows me away.”
While there are no extreme circumstances in his fourth-grade classroom, Webb uses the training daily for problem reconciliation. And he models what he teaches. “Kids watch everything we do. They’re going to emulate us and watch our actions,” he said.
Hailstone’s second graders benefit from her travels in more subtle ways. “It’s been a personal journey for me more than anything. It’s made me more patient, it’s made me a better thinker, and it’s given me tools to help with class dynamics.”
“I don’t teach Martin Luther King Day because everyday is everybody’s day,” Hailstone added.
The most poignant moment of Webb and Hailstone’s 2011 tour was, said Hailstone, “coming home and finding out what had happened in Tucson. I was like, wow, for every two steps forward, we’re taking one step back.”