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Get on the Bus

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“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a flame to be kindled.” —Plutarch.

By Tom Peterson

Summer is a great time for an adventure that could give us a new perspective, shake things up. Help us leave our comfort zones.

In the summer between her high school junior and senior years my niece Mary Lois, went with a group of 19 teenagers and five adult leaders on a short journey that she says changed her life. The program, “Get on the Bus,” was the idea of David McNair, a youth coordinator for the Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina. This was the first trip. Mary Lois signed on because friends at her church were going and “the group was racially diverse and that really helped,” she said.

Get on the Bus, Woolworth’s Greensboro

get on the bus mary lois sheltonAfter an orientation in Ashville, the first stop was the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, where in 1960 four black students sat at a segregated lunch counter, raising the nation’s awareness and sparking sit-ins in almost a dozen cities. (The old Woolworth’s has recently been restored and turned into the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.) As the group sat in the stools at the lunch counter, a woman involved in the sit-in told her experience and explained non-violence.

Each night the group stayed in a church and talk about that day—led by a professional mediator who happened to be black—about racial questions that made them feel uncomfortable but brought them closer together.

Koinonia Farm in Georgia was the next stop. This intentional community where blacks and whites lived and worked together—for equal pay—beginning in the 1950s, not surprisingly earned resistance and death threats from the local white power base, including the Ku Klux Klan. The Get on the Bus group watched a documentary on founder Clarence Jordan and stayed in houses where children attending an integrated camp had to hide under their beds during racial shootings. The group attended the First Baptist Church, Plains, Sunday school class taught by President Jimmy Carter who spoke about Habitat for Humanity (founded out of Koinonia Farms) and some of his work in Africa.

Get on the Bus, we joined the protest

The next night they watched a documentary on The School of the Americas, at Ft. Benning, a controversial U.S. training program in Georgia that trains Latin American military and police. (Many graduates from the program have allegedly become brutal forces behind oppressive regimes.) “That night we voted to join the scheduled protest,” says Mary Lois. (Five girls opted out of participating.) “We decided we would be pro-peace, as opposed to anti-war. We made signs and had lots of guidelines. Police were waiting at Ft. Benning. The protest was loud; the police were protecting the demonstrators. We’d sing and pray. People in some cars would curse or give us the finger. Others were nice. We talked about non-violence and didn’t yell back.”

get on the bus

From there, the group crossed over to Selma, Alabama, where the met with a man who helped lead the march across the bridge. Then on to the site of the church bombing in Birmingham, to the Loraine Hotel (Civil Rights Museum) in Memphis where Martin Luther King was shot, and to the Highlander Center in Tennessee.

Before the trip, Mary Lois had intended to study biology in college, but changed her plans, ended up getting her degrees in sociology and social justice. She points to the “Get on the Bus” tour, the movie “Blood Diamond,” and the situation in Darfur as reasons for her change of mind—an experiential education event, a movie and current events. (I’m guessing there were many other influences.)

Is there a bus you’ve been thinking about getting on?

Photos: Woolworths, DBKing, Creative Commons; flame, he who laughs last, cc; Selma, Abernathy Family, cc. 

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