TURNING OUR EYES BACK ON history: A Civil

Rights Mission to GA & AL

By Kelsi Hasden Women’s Philanthropy Mission Participant & BRIDGES Class Member

I recently participated in the Women’s Philanthropy Civil Rights Mission to Georgia & Alabama. In Montgomery, AL, we visited the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, as well as the Rosa Parks Museum. In Selma, we walked over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and listened to Lynda Blackmon-Lowery speak about marching with Dr. Martin Luther King. We visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and heard from Reverend Calvin Woods, who helped organize protests there.

As a Jew of Color (JOC), it was an engaging, but sobering trip. The most moving moments for me were speaking with women who had marched with Dr. King. It took using their bodies to force the government to recognize the humanity it refused to see.

In The Legacy Museum, I met Corean, a docent who uses her time now to educate the hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Never forget, a phrase we use at Yom HaShoah, is her lived experience. Corean was 15 when she marched. I was astonished. What was I doing at 15? No, what am I doing today to ensure the rights that others fought for with their bodies and their lives still exist when my girls grow up? I asked Corean what made her decide to march. Her response was another surprise. She said it was exciting and new; they didn’t know how dangerous it was at the time. We only know now from turning our eyes back at history.

Lynda was 14 when she marched from Selma to Montgomery. She kneeled and prayed at the Edmund Pettus Bridge just before Alabama state troopers attacked the marchers. She always thought she had fallen and passed out. It wasn’t until 2020, when she was interviewed on BET’s ‘Boiling Point’, that she saw old footage of Alabama State Troopers kicking and hitting her. For 55 years, when Lynda spoke about her experience, she never knew what actually happened.

And while these women lived to speak about their experiences, Frederick Shannon did not. I only know this because I saw his name at the EJI National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Fred “Kid” Shannon was lynched in 1924 at the age of 28 in Wayland, KY. He was a coal worker accused of killing a white man. While in jail, a mob broke in and lynched him. The break-in was so silent, and the night was so dark, according to newspapers, that no one could be identified.

My maiden name is Shannon, and my family hails from many cities in Kentucky. The significance isn’t lost on me.

At the end of our trip, with our eyes turned back in time, we only had one unanswered question: what do we do with this knowledge when we return home to Jacksonville? For me, that answer lies in my two little girls who need to know who and where they come from - so they can go on to do great things, pushing us all, ever forward.