Keeping the struggle alive

The brisk autumn wind greets sophomore Courtney Forbes as she waits in the large crowd gathering outside of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on the wet and drizzly morning of Oct. 30. It is not until midday -- six hours after she arrived -- that Forbes sees what she has been waiting for all morning: a polished mahogany coffin bearing the late Rosa Parks.

Although only 4,000 people -- relatives, close friends and fellow civil rights leaders -- were invited to Parks's funeral on Nov. 2 in Detroit, Michigan, according to CNN, millions of other Americans will cherish the memory of this civil rights pioneer. While Blazers like Forbes notice that many students seem apathetic about contemporary civil rights issues, they exhibit the drive to keep the civil rights movement alive in their community. These Blazers are among the many honoring Parks's memory as they follow in the footsteps of 20th-century civil rights leaders by being leaders for a new generation.

Rosa Parks Day

Forbes does not regret waiting in an incredibly long line just to touch Parks's closed casket for a few seconds. She respects the unique spirit of social activists like Parks. "They just don't make `em like her anymore, " she says.

Fifty years after Parks's historic act of defiance on Dec. 1, 1955, the W.E.B. Dubois Honor Society commemorates the work of Parks and other civil rights heroes. Seniors Soulyana Lakew, Dena Tran and Andrea Mvemba stand at the front of room 167 as they lead the club in a recitation of the pledge. They, like the other members, are clad in black and white outfits for Rosa Parks Day, symbolizing how Parks helped to bring together the different races through needed social action.

During the club meeting, the seniors lead a discussion on the impact of the day's tributes to Parks, including an InfoFlow commercial, a moment of silence, the symbolic colors and memorial ribbons.

The club plans to conduct a school-wide essay contest on Parks. Student winners will receive monetary prizes, but the contest is also intended as an incentive to make students research and learn about Parks's life, says Tran.

Complacency and racism

Soon after the meeting, Lakew, Tran, Mvemba and senior Corinne Etoundi meet on Blair Boulevard and start an intimate discussion. They tried to stay optimistic during the meeting, but now the girls reveal their doubts and disappointments.

Mvemba feels that despite its intentions, the Honor Society's tribute did not have the desired effect. Tran adds that some students didn't even know who Rosa Parks was or just didn't care.

In Mvemba's AP Environmental Science class, Mvemba inquired if any classmates were wearing black and white for the day's tributes. "Who gives a [explicit] about Rosa Parks," a white girl said.

Initially, Mvmeba wasn't sure if the girl was joking or serious. "Even though she may have been joking, the fact that she would say it was harsh," Mvemba says.

Tran says that only one person she met fully understood why Rosa Parks refused to forfeit her seat on the bus. "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that wasn't true," reads Parks's autobiography, "Rosa Parks: My Story." "I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in." Parks later said her decision was partly sparked by the 1955 racially motivated murdering of 14-year-old Emmett Till. "I thought about Emmett Till and just couldn't go back," she said.

Lakew recalls a relevant racially offensive experience. One day as a black boy was carrying a microwave into the Student Government Association office, a white boy declared," We should put him into the microwave and let him look worse than Emmett Till." Lakew was shocked beyond words.

The next time Lakew saw this white boy, she told him that she did not appreciate the comment at all. He ignored her, so Lakew pursued the matter. She searched on Google for a picture from Till's funeral so that the boy could visualize the severity of the issue. Till's mutilated face was visible from an open casket. Still, the boy just shrugged in complete apathy. "That was my first and hopefully last experience of that," Lakew says.

Senior Natalie Friedman expresses frustration with the apparent lack of awareness and wants civil rights and racism more widely discussed. Besides overtly racist students, she indicates why other white students may not be inclined to discuss civil rights. "It's an uncomfortable issue for most people," she acknowledges. The legacy of racial oppression in the U.S. causes most white students to feel like the oppressors themselves and to avoid these discussions, she explains.

Speaking up for civil rights

Forbes believes that all people, white and black alike, would care more for the movement if they were informed on the civil rights efforts of past and present leaders. "You're a lot more appreciative of things like that when you actually get to realize what's going on," she says.

Friedman credits much of her consciousness of racial issues to her past experiences with Operation Understanding D.C. (OUDC), a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening relationships and promoting racial understanding between the black and Jewish communities.

She believes that many young people are complacent about civil rights because they take for granted the goals that the previous generation of activists achieved. They don't realize that many more goals have yet to be attained, she says.

Since her eye-opening experiences in OUDC, Friedman has become more aware of subtle forms of racism. "I'm a lot less afraid to speak up," she says.

Any fears about fighting racism that Forbes might have harbored were shed at home, where a strong focus on black history contributed to her dedication to civil rights. In class debates, she regularly advocates for black rights, and she continues to inform her peers on the accomplishments of past and present civil rights leaders.

Accounting teacher Jacquelyn Shropshire was a civil rights activist in her youth. She remembers the struggle that her generation of black youths endured to make great accomplishments in the segregated South. Between the ages of 15 and 17, Shropshire was jailed three times for protesting segregation in restaurants and hotels. These first-hand experiences make the apathy she sees in her students all the more frustrating. "We need to educate children, especially people of color, and not lose the hard work that elders did to make life better," she says.

The future of civil rights may not seem clearly defined, but the struggle is always alive, says Ned Sloan, an attorney with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It's never linear; each generation has to fight its own battle and push for changes," he says.