Greetings from Day 15 in Little Rock!
By this time, our group has established a strong sense of community, where its difficult to believe the awkwardness that stifled the hotel rooms on that first day in Birmingham. Throughout this trip, we have been learning, growing, and struggling together as we work through these civil rights issues in our own minds and try to apply it to our own experiences. Personally, I have never experienced the swiftness of friendship that has been created over the past fifteen days, and I feel lucky to call these wonderful people sitting next to me my friends.
Today, we got a chance to explore the city of Little Rock. Arkansas has been surprising in lots of ways, turning around our initial beliefs of a dry desert landscape that was painted as Arkansas in our Pacific Northwest cultured minds. Arkansas is full of green, beautiful trees, rolling hills, and many small lakes, and despite the heavy heat that matches the Southern climate, we have developed a sense of home in our temporary residence.
The city itself is not as bustling as downtown Memphis, but there was much to do compared to downtown Montgomery. Some went to the Riverside bookstore, some to check out the river walk at Junction Bridge, and some to the Clinton Library to check out the time capsule of the Clinton administration in the 90s.
After we came back together, we explored the Mosaic Templare, which outlined African American culture throughout the century, from social life in Little Rock to art, music, and literature that built a thriving atmosphere. From the Templare we went to the Clinton School of Public Service within the University of Arkansas, where a panel of students discussed the graduate program for a masters in public service. According to these students, there are three phases to completing this program, where they participate in a team research and service project, an international project, and a capstone project.
Although our reactions to this panel and the graduate program were all different, there was some agreement of the benefit of hearing these students stories of leaving their hometowns in order to come to Arkansas to participate in this program that is so active in social change, where we were able to relate to our own hopes and dreams of what we want our futures to look like.
For me personally, as this trip is drawing near to its close, I feel a profound and definite change within myself as I have been learning and growing as an individual. I am inspired the people who were active in this movement; Martin Luther King Jr, the Little Rock 9, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, the Freedom Riders, and all the others that I cannot name and who I will never know, but who live on in so many ways. All this used to be a section of a textbook that was glazed over within a whitewashed curriculum, but to stand where they stood, on the pavement where blood was spilled and slaves walked in chains, in the air that filled and escaped their lungs, we are changed. We understand more about what matters and what still needs to be done, and we feel the scars of what they felt. I have gained a sense of courage through them and for them, and I am confident that this feeling will keep burning in me as I find my feet planted in Portland once again.
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land.
I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.
And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” Martin Luther King Jr.
Hannah Schoen