Winnie Hawker-Boehnke - Day 16

7:40 Okay so not much sleep last night. Actually I’m not sure we ever have “enough” sleep, but, hey, I haven’t fallen asleep during the day…yet. Well we have a really full day today, including driving three hours to Jackson and I need to pack. This whole deal of “one-night-stands” is a slight annoyance since we’re transporting 45lb suitcases.

9:00 We have arrived. 400 Washington Ave., otherwise known as Southern Poverty Law Center. For those who don’t know who or what SPLC is I’ll give you a hint…it’s a law center. *grins* Actually to refer to SPLC as just a law center is a diss to all of their work. SPLC is the publisher of Teaching Tolerance magazine and movies and is the publisher of the Intelligence Reports. They monitor all active hate groups in the United States and often lead or assist in prosecution of these groups. When we got there we first walked through the museum, which documents the lives and deaths of the 40 martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement. We then watched a movie on the same people. Afterwards we met with Joe Levin, co-founder of the SPLC. He was interesting and gave us insight into using law against hate and into the importance of monitoring the various hate groups. I was by far more impressed by him and SPLC when I discovered they were the publishers of Teaching Tolerance. Although I think most of us would agree that the most moving part about SPLC was visiting the memorial to those 40 martyrs. I’m not sure how to explain the memorial, but essentially the names of these martyrs are carved into a stone disk and then water just barely covers it. Our photographer Stewart got some good shots of our hands on this memorial.

10:45 “Remember NO Arguing!” –Karen K. I promise to you that we, on most accounts, succeeded. Here’s the deal, we just arrived at the Foundation for Moral Law. What went through your mind when you read that name? Exactly. But in all fairness, our first two speakers from here, Rich Hobbson, executive director, and Ben DuPre, lead lawyer, were quite good. They were great at explaining of this organization. From what I gathered it all comes down to them consistently arguing original intent. They talked about a current case they’re working on and showed us a brief from the case. For those who haven’t seen one of these briefs, they really aren’t all that brief. However, they brought in a third speaker and, well, after this the floodgates were opened. This man’s title is Chief Justice Moore. Looking back I supposed he came in looking to change our “mixed up democratic minds.” Now we didn’t forget Karen’s words, but passion is blinding. And to be fair, of the five or six students who ended up in an argument with Moore only two were actually trying to argue. The remainder were only trying to not let him walk over us, as he tried to manipulate us. Matt (trip leader) best puts it to words, “He’d spend a half hour trying to trip them [students] up and turn their own words against them.” As a note, we really didn’t trip. Even despite the fact that we did argue in the end, we responded with intelligent and factual comments and overall, I must say, we handled it quite well. We even achieved the original goal, which was to learn about the foundation: their goals and methods.

12:00 Do you really need to know about lunch? I’m pretty sure that one of my classmates has covered the seemingly constant consumption of sandwiches. So I’ll skip the fact that we had Subway, again.

12:30 We just walked two blocks down Dexter to arrive at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church. For those who didn’t know Dexter is the only church for Dr. King to have served as senior pastor. Also the King family named one of their sons after the church, Dexter, a fact the tour lady made sure to mention. Now from the outside the church appeared like most any other church and when you walk the same applies. Except when you looked to the wall on the right there was a magnificent mural. We found out later that the mural was done by a church member. The mural documented King’s struggles and successes with the Civil Right’s Movement. Our tour included a short movie (~20 min.) and then a guided tour/explanation of the mural and the sanctuary. That was it.

2:00 Okay, well we are now at the Rosa Parks Museum. At face value I wasn’t sure what this museum was going to offer that differed from previous museums, especially since it was all about Rosa Parks and the bus boycott. However, that was a face value, upon entrance into the actual museum the first part was interactive with the museum built like a set from the time. The other part was not interactive, but I found it more interesting than the average museum because they had all of the original legal documents: police reports and law files.

4:00 Equal Justice Initiative. That name just sounds promising. EJI is a law firm and works in various arenas of criminal law, but recently they have been focusing on a specific problem they have noticed. It was a surprise to us to find out that America sentences 13 and 14 year olds to life without parole, a big surprise. The surprise grew when we found out that many of these young teens haven’t even committed murder, some of these kids simply committed check fraud. There are a variety of reasons and policies contributing to this practice, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that America is the only country in the world that jails 13 and 14 year olds to life without parole. We had the pleasure of speaking to the founder of EJI, Bryan Stevenson. He really explained why this is occurring, but also told us about their efforts to combat this problem. In full, Stevenson and EJI were very inspirational and memorable. Many of us left there with new commitment to being change agents; some left there wanting to be just like Stevenson. If you want more on my personal reaction read the poem posted. I encourage you all to visit eji.org and learn more.

6:00 We’re driving to Jackson ya’ll!