Civil rights tour enlightens 18

Eighteen Queens students journeyed to the south to learn first-hand the painful and tragic experiences that civil rights activists endured, attempting to earn the rights and privileges that many African Americans take for granted today.
Sponsored by the American Civil Rights Education Services, Inc. (ACRES) headquartered in Brooklyn, the students met many of the unknown heroes who lived in the shadows of the more well known civil rights leaders, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.
It is a lesson, which Azania Edwards, a participant in the nine-day July expedition, and a graduate of George Washington Carver High School in Springfield Gardens, will never forget. She says that the experience has changed her profoundly; she vows to no longer use the word, &#8220nigger,” casually.
&#8220If people knew the history of this word, no one should be allowed to use it,” Edwards said.
For Edwards, the most unforgettable portion of the six-state travel-study expedition was their visit to the slave museum in Selma, Alabama. She and the forty other students were forced to enter a mock slave ship, experiencing the overcrowding, darkness, and verbal denigration heaped upon the slaves. Edwards says she was so affected by the incident she could not stop crying.
ACRES, founded by Shawn Devlin in 2001, has thus far provided 800 scholarships for under-served youth and sponsors three civil rights expeditions a year. Their mission is to promote cross-cultural understanding, teach civic responsibility, and celebrate diversity by teaching civil rights-era history and exposing program participants to living historical figures.
The &#8220living historical figures,” that the students met included civil rights activists such as Charles Evers, former aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and Hollis Watkins, a participant in the famous Woolworth lunch counter &#8220sit ins.”
They also met James Meredith, the first African American to integrate the University of Mississippi and Reverend C.T. Vivian, a rider of the first &#8220Freedom Bus” into Jackson, Mississippi. The group visited with other activists and took a trip to the site of Dr. Luther King's final &#8220mountaintop” speech in Memphis, Tennessee.
In conjunction with the pilgrimages, ACRES co-sponsors with College Now at Medgar Evers College a three-credit college preparatory course on slavery and civil rights. Janice Dixon, ACRES director of education, also revealed that the organization is focusing on building an ACRES chapter in Queens. Added to this year's itinerary was a visit to Katrina Hurricane-ravaged ninth ward in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Donnie Whitehead, a former civil rights activist himself and the parent of a former student participant in the expedition, feels that the civil rights travel-study ACRES program is important because &#8220people have a tendency to rewrite history in a negative light, especially concerning African Americans. It is extremely important for people to know the people who sacrificed for change,” he said.