The Past Walks with Us

By Michael Penn MA'97

The next day's journey north, through the Mississippi Delta, was supposed to be easy, at least compared to the torment of New Orleans. Werner, who lived and taught in Mississippi during the 1980s, had promised a low-key day, which the group badly needed. Later, as we headed out of Clarksdale, bristling with all that the group had taken in there, Werner apologized for predicting that anything would be easy. "I forgot that this was still Clarksdale," he said.

Taylor had selected the soundtrack for our exodus from Clarksdale, choosing an Erykah Badu song that she thought expressed the tsunami of mixed emotions that many were experiencing. The bus was unusually quiet. A few students made notes in their journals. Some in the back chatted softly. But the majority of the group seemed content to fix their gazes out the window, watching the endless stretches of the Mississippi Delta roll away.

No doubt many were mentally replaying the experiences at the Delta Amusement Cafe. It's hard to overlook the face of racism where it still lingers. But my mind drifted to another person we had met in Clarksdale, a man named Bobby Williams.

Williams worked the cash register in the gift shop at the Delta Blues Museum. He was a tall African-American with an easy smile. A number of us joked with him as our group, never frugal when there's music to be had, bought out the store.

As we were making our way through the line, Williams turned suddenly serious. He looked critically at the group. "How many of y'all are coming back to Mississippi after you graduate?" he challenged. Looking directly at the professors, he told us about the Delta's critical shortage of teachers, which not even service groups like Teach for America had been able to dent. Most young kids preferred to go to inner cities, he said. "We can't get teachers here in the Delta. We need y'all to come back and teach."

The point was pointed: we were tourists in a South that needed activists.

This trip had always been intended as a prelude to action, step one in a plan to energize the hearts and minds of these students. But some, I know, were questioning their capacity. Even logging emotions in their journals had become exasperating. "I just stared at a blank page," said one student. It was only Friday, and we were still a long way from home. We had Oxford, Memphis, and more stops ahead. There were no weekends on this journey.

But as we left Clarksdale, I felt convinced that this wouldn't be the last time some of these students would make this journey. (In fact, a few had already decided to return to help work with a literacy program in the Delta.) Tired though they were, some of these students had already shown a resolve that would be recognizable to Colonel Johnson, to Autherine Lucy Foster, to Vernon Dahmer, and to the countless people, white and black, whose hope kept a dream alive.

At Destrehan Plantation, for example, the sixteen-year-old tour guide who led some of the students around the plantation began to cry, overcome by the group's questions about how the slaves lived. She clearly hadn't viewed the house through the eyes of an African-American slave before. She was obviously embarrassed and uncomfortable. At that point, the students could have been arrogant and superior. They could have acted like erudite Northerners come to look down on the South. But they didn't.

Gently, the students explained their trip and their academic interests. Marjorie Cook, a senior in sociology and history, approached the guide, holding out a copy of the class reading list. "Excuse me, do you mind if I give this to you?" she asked.

It takes courage to share one's perspective, just as it took a certain bravado not to storm, disgustedly, out of the Delta Amusement Cafe. Sometimes the hardest thing to be is an example.

Over the loudspeakers, Erykah Badu sang, "With all the problems of the day, how can we go on? . . . But you're still living." I looked around the bus, seeing faces carved with introspection. The students were exhausted, beaten down, and full with hard experience. But I believe I heard in every one a voice, calling out, "I'm here. Everybody knows I'm here."

Senior editor Michael Penn MA'97 and photographer Jeff Miller went through nine days, two notebooks, and thirty-seven rolls of film to document the Freedom Ride. To see more from the trip, including selected student journal entries, visit http://www.news.wisc.edu/freedom.

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