Spirit in Action
Civil Rights Pilgrimage
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ - I learned just a couple of weeks ago about a wonderful program offered by the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, called the Civil Rights Pilgrimage, and a new supplementary program called the Selma Eau Claire Exchange. I poke my nose around and found a few people to talk about different aspects of this eye opening work. We'll start off with Kirsten Bauer, who's been a student participant of the Civil Rights Pilgrimage twice, and then we'll talk with Jody Tyson Ritter, the UWEC Associate Dean of Students who started the program and finishing with Joanne Bland, a resident of Selma, who is part of the events there on the Selma Birmingham March, and what happened on Bloody Sunday. Up front, you should know that there are major excerpts of this interview that can't fit into the broadcast, and that you'll want to find on northernspiritradio.org. Right now, we'll start off our exploration by a visit with Kirsten Bauer at the University of Eau Claire. Kirsten, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. - You're very welcome. - So, you're a college student at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, I think you're in your sophomore year, and you've participated twice in the Civil Rights Pilgrimage. How did you get involved in this? What's your interest in that particularly? - Well, I'm a history major, and I've always been interested in the history of social movements. So, is this one in particular? I just saw on a poster on campus and decided I really wanted to get involved in the campus opportunities that they provide to their students. So, this was my first step in getting involved here. - You've always been interested in the history of social movements, why is that? I mean, that seems a little bit peculiar in this day and age. Aren't you supposed to be interested in business? - Well, I come from a pretty diverse family in my household alone. I have two siblings that are Hispanic and one that is half black and one that is gay, and so we're a pretty open family, and I really appreciate the diversity that was fostered in my home growing up, and so I did something I hold gear, and I wanna help support those ideas. - History, you decided you were a history major. Did you decide that as of your freshman year, you were just clear that that's what you were gonna do? - No, I actually came into school as a nursing major. My mom was a nurse, and it felt like something I could do. I didn't really know what I wanted to put myself into, and I took a history class here, history 125, on the 1500s and on. Loved it so much I could sit in that lecture all day, so I think it was a sign that I needed to switch. - Was history an interest or passion of yours in high school? I asked this in part because I've had on my program the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me. If you've seen that book, if you've read it, you'll know why that would be especially applicable, and I just had, just last week, the author of a book called What Kind of Citizen. He talks about how our social studies and our school can teach people to be better citizens. That includes a social justice aspect to it. So, did you have a history interest in high school? Did history grab you when you first got exposed to it back in high school? - I definitely had an interest in history back in high school. I even paid for a history class, one of my favorite history teachers, Mr. Rossum. And I knew that I had an interest in history, but I was concerned about the fields that I could go to and being in high school. I think the last thing on my mind was teaching and coming back to school after being in school for so long. - What kind of citizen in that book, one of the things he talks about is how our education system should be different in the United States. What we teach in school is different from a country that's not a democracy, that doesn't have this, of the people by the people for the people ethic. Did you learn anything in your history classes and part of this trip, the civil rights pilgrimage that made you seem more clearly what we need to be teaching and learning and doing in this country? - Oh, definitely. There is a lack of the representation of women's contributions to our history that is being taught in schools. It's also has to do with the fact that the victors write the history books. And so what you are taking out of that may be just one perspective, which in the social studies they teach you to view all perspectives as valuable and as a part of that collective body of knowledge. And so things that you're seeing nowadays that are implemented in the history books may be more so focusing on the Native American perspective of the Christopher Columbus era. And instead of celebrating Christopher Columbus discovering America, so-called discovering, you might talk about instead how America didn't need to be discovered because there were already an entire body of different peoples here if the occupy is here. So I think it's important to not view it from a victor's perspective so much and also to incorporate all narratives that we can not just neglect women from those narratives. So studies in history, you look at those kind of things. Is there a part where you get to be an activist and do something about changing the world? Oh, definitely. I think that if you can bring to light the narratives that have been swept under the rug, you're doing your part in making sure that all people are represented. And that's kind of what this nation was kind of framed on, but we haven't always been following those protocols. And so I think I feel a sense of responsibility to kind of put those narratives out there. In Kirsten, since you obviously have some interest in seeing women better represented in our history, you know the thing that's going on, trying to decide which women's face they're gonna put on, I think it's a $20 bill, maybe instead of Jackson, I think that's what's going on. Is there a woman that you'd like to see on the bill, someone who stands out for you in history? Aren't they considering Rosa Parks? So I think that was the thing that I saw. Well, that's one of the names that surfaced Rosa Parks, yeah. So is that one that you'd go with, or is there some other more influential and inspirational person for you? - I think I would define seeing any woman who portrayed the $1 bill that stood for historical purpose. I think Rosa Parks is a good start because she is so well known to the public. She's one of the only female narratives that we see out there that is, and even that is kind of falsely portrayed in the way that we learn about her and her contribution to the movement, but seeing her on the $20 bill would make me happy and it'd be a good start. - Where did you actually travel as you did the Civil Rights pilgrimage? - So on our trip, we hit between five and six different states, including Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, brief period stop in there, and Arkansas, in Atlanta, Georgia. We toured the new human and civil rights museum there, which is something that I did not get to do in my freshman year that I had the privilege of doing my sophomore year, and I was thrilled with their new exhibits that address current issues today, and that was a pretty awesome event. We also got to speak to Charles person in Atlanta, and he was a member of the Freedom Riders, and so that was something that was very special there. Other places we visited, Birmingham, Alabama, Selma, Alabama, Montgomery, and then New Orleans in Louisiana, and Little Rock in Arkansas. - Which places for you hold the most power? The people, is it the place? You can have a piece of stone, which is a monument, but I suspect that hearing history from the mouths of people would probably be more affecting. How does it work for you? - Absolutely, I agree with that. So like I had said in Atlanta, we got to speak to Charles person, and just hearing his perspective personally on what happened on the Freedom Riders, and all the challenges that they had to face, and the decisions that they had to make at such a young age, seeing that they could make a contribution, a lot of them being so young, even younger than I am now, makes me feel like I have that ability to also make kind of a big contribution to the world. - Well, you're in college now, and a lot of these people, at least for the Freedom Riders, I think mainly they did that in the summer, hop on the buses and travel and break the law, essentially. Are you tempted to break the law? - I think that sometimes it's necessary to challenge the systematic issues that are implemented in our society today. I don't know if I would condone breaking the law, but if it's something that I had to do that I knew that was the only way that I could get that message across the need for change, yeah, I would step up to the plate and do the same thing that these people did around 50 years ago. - So you've been already twice now taking the civil rights pilgrimage, Kirsten, are you tempted to go each year? Is it different each year? Why did you go twice instead of once? You know, I've been there, done that. - Well, I think there is so much you can learn from the experience, it's not a one time thing. Every year that I've gone so far, I've learned something new and it's influenced me to change my life in a certain way. I actually went on the trip a second time because this year it had coordinated with a class that I was taking and so if you took the class, you went on the pilgrimage. And of course I wasn't going to complain. I was going so I took advantage of doing that a second time. I don't think that I will be going again only for the purposes that every year there is a waiting list actually, which is really exciting to see how the power behind the message is being spread on campus and people are eager to go. And so I want to give others that opportunity to experience what I've gotten to. If I had the opportunity to go every year, I would. - You said though, Kirsten, that it changed you to go on this trip, change the way you live. How has it changed you? What effect has it had on you? - Oh, I think that it made me realize that I can make a contribution to the world and it's gotten me thinking in innovative ways on how I can go about making my own contribution, leaving my footprint on history and making social change where it's needed. And so I've definitely become an advocate for social justice and I've gotten more involved in activist issues. I was a part of the social justice LRT here on campus. And so I'm really just branching out and trying to find ways that I can get involved and leave my mark. - It's usually a kind of a comfortable northern thing we do to look at the southern states who after all had segregation, we didn't have official legal segregation in the north. How does that play out when you're at a place like the University of Wisconsin-Oclair? - On the trip, that's something that we talk about a lot. We make sure that even though we are getting all these experiences well, we're in the south that we are consistently making ties to how this relates specifically to our university and our community back at home because it's something that being in college, people come from all sorts of backgrounds. So if we can make a tie to a common place for us, which would be here at our university, and we make that association to understand that it wasn't just a southern problem. It was something that happened here too and continues to happen. - And so what does that meant specifically for you, Kirsten, about how you live differently in Wisconsin? - I'm just always careful not to take things at face value when I first am approached with something that's new information to me or someone that I've never met before. I just don't want to place any judgments before I know a whole story. And I'm always open to differing perspectives because I understand that people come from different backgrounds. And so I want to make sure that I'm being sensitive to their beliefs and not passing judgment off face value. - It sounds like pretty much the civil rights pilgrimage is pretty fast moving. You're just around for a day or a couple hours and you're on to a new place. Have you been tempted to go and sit down and say here's what it's like in Selma or here's what it's like in Birmingham? - Yeah, it is actually very fast paced. We have another program here that's offered on campus that actually stemmed from the civil rights program. There are a few students who had a very special experience in Selma and in Selma. They wanted to continue that experience and show for spring break. They now go to specifically just Selma and kind of volunteer in the community down there. So that's a 10 day experience, which is still short lived. And ultimately, yes, I would love to pack up and move down there and help out in whatever ways I can. But my obligation is here right now just finishing up my school and then I hope to make some contribution to the world. And I'm not sure if that means contributing to the civil rights movement and specific in Selma or any of the places that we visited on the CRP or in a different way than I'm going to contribute. But I do plan to kind of hunker down somewhere and experience it further. - Well, you've got a great future ahead of you. You certainly seem to have the appetites and the openness to really experience a part of the world that too many of us close our eyes to. So I'm really glad that you've got that perspective. I hope it just grows and feeds you and makes possible for you to do important changes for the world. Thanks so much for your appetite for social justice and for joining me for spirit in action. - Great, thank you. - That was University of Wisconsin-O-Claire sophomore Kirsten Bauer, twice participant of the civil rights pilgrimage. Next up is the person who founded the program, Jodie Tyson-Ritter is Associate Dean of Students at UWEC, has been leading the pilgrimage since 2008, teaches women's studies and works on multicultural issues. Jodie Tyson-Ritter joins us by phone from Eau Claire. It's wonderful to have you here today, Jodie, for spirit in action. - Hello, Mark, thanks for having me. - Looking over the work that you do for the University of Wisconsin-O-Claire, I was very impressed. I mean, I saw a number of things that we'll talk about shortly, but what I really wondered was, how can someone who's an Associate Dean of Students get such interesting work in their schedule? - I feel very lucky to work at a campus that allows you to follow your passion and interest. And I actually came to this project because the students prompted me. They came to their residence hall director a number of years ago and said, "We'd like to do this project." And she brought them to me 'cause we had been colleagues in the past. Together, we sort of decided we would try to make this for the students and my supervisor at the time thought it was a great idea. And I didn't think that I'd still be doing it all these years later, but it's been a wonderful professional development as well as personal growth opportunity for me. - The thing that surprised me when I look at your CV is that you started out with a bachelor's degree in biology. And I'm just kind of wondering how that morphed into all of this work you're doing. Civil rights, pilgrimages, one of the things, there's the blue gold beginnings. There's another and you teach women's studies and you operate a farm. Maybe that's the only thing that's connected with bio and she's like matching. - You're trying to understand what goes on inside of my head. I don't know that that's a good thing. I started out thinking I wanted to be a doctor 'cause I wanted to help people. And I had a wonderful opportunity as an undergrad to go to school at a fantastic University of St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas and had a great educational experience. But at the end of my career, I was rushing through a lab that should have been really, really interesting to get to my job as an intern in the Medina Students Office doing programming. And it was like a lightning bolt that kind of said, "Wow, if you're so excited to get there, why do you have this?" And as a major, and by that time it was too late to really change my major. So I finished up that degree and went on to Columbia University to get my master's degree and really focused on multicultural competence development in my master's degree study. So that's been a passion of mine for about 25 years now. - So you've been leading the civil rights pilgrimage and you just talk multicultural education. What really led you there? I mean, what was your experience that multiculturalism particularly called to you? - I was born in Minnesota and moved to Texas and at the end of seventh grade to a pretty diverse community in Sulfur Springs, Texas and really expanded my worldview a great deal. And I think from that time on, I've really been interested in how we are connected to one another and how the world should be socially justice. It's been a priority. I've parents who really have advocated for social justice my whole life. And I think the combination of being in diverse spaces and really caring about social justice. And then working at a campus like UW Eau Claire, that's pretty homogeneous. And yet we know these students need to have multicultural competence to go out and to work in our diverse world. So it was sort of the perfect storm and simultaneously where we have a very small student of color population on our campus and we need them to feel safe and comfortable so that they can learn and grow here even though it's a homogeneous space. So a perfect storm for a great opportunity like the civil rights pilgrimage. - I was wondering if you were one of the first campuses to get civil rights pilgrimage. I did some research. I saw that Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. They've been doing it since it looks like 2008. - University of Washington. Armed communications, they have it. University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Wright State University Black Cultural Resources Center in Dayton, Ohio. All of these people are doing this kind of civil rights pilgrimage. How did you get exposed to the idea where you were one of the original innovators? - No, I don't think so. Marquette had done something similar and that's where the students that brought it to us. And actually the program in Urbana-Champaign is run by my colleague, January Bolton, who was the co-founder with me and her four students. So it's really great that our program led to that program there. We've shared our itinerary with many, many schools at this point and we've taken folks from the University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and University of Wisconsin, Stout, on our trip with us in the hopes that they would grow and develop their own trip. So we're certainly not the innovators, but we have the longevity. I think that's really exciting. A lot of schools do it for a few years and then stop and we've been able to maintain it since 2008, which is really, I think, a testament to our students and their commitment to making the trip better every year and expanding it to more students. - You've got quite a bit of perspective having done this since 2008. One of the things that's happened in the country since your trip in 2008, after that trip happened actually, President Obama was elected. So you've seen a lot of changes happening in the world. How has this changed the civil rights pilgrimage and particularly energy for it and what comes from doing the trip? - There have been a lot of changes and yet I think we've had some backlash as well. I just was reading an article yesterday. It's been six years since the Trayvon Martin case and when that broke, we were on the pilgrimage trip and had some amazing dialogue. And since then we've had so many other incidents around our country that really shine a spotlight on how far we've come and yet how far we need to go. So I think the opportunity to think about those challenges with our students and really think critically, both for myself as well as challenge our students to think critically about steps along the way that would make those types of incidents not happen and the way in which our world's still, it's still very much a racist world, even though we try to say we're in a post racial society, I don't think we've arrived yet. - Give us a little bit of overview of the pilgrimage. I imagine it must have changed a bit. Give us the broad view. - So the most exciting and interesting thing for me as an educator is that the trip is really all student led and student run. So the students develop the itinerary, they develop the activities that we do on the trip, the discussion questions down to the snacks that we select and the hotels that we stay in, they have really made the trip their own. And each year we have a new team of coordinators and they put their own personal stamp on the trip. And so every trip is different, which for me makes it interesting and exciting. It is also an opportunity for those students to follow some of their own personal interests. A student might be interested in women's issues in particular, while another student might be interested in history. Another student might be interested in personal narratives and how to tell the stories. So it's a very unique experience in that it's developed and implemented by students. And obviously for them, a phenomenal professional development opportunity to develop and implement a trip for 112 of their peers is a pretty exceptional experience as a 20 or 21 year old. So the students have to go on the trip first and then they apply to be a coordinator. And each year we get better. We take lots of feedback from the folks who go. We meet new people along the way who give us ideas about new opportunities. We've engaged new faculty throughout the experience. We've had a journalism faculty engage with us and take her students and develop a course around reporting on difficult conversations. And so we were able to begin to think about the experiences through the lens of media. And this past year we had a public history teacher participate with us on the trip and to have a faculty member in public history to go on the trip and really to share a very different perspective with phenomenal. We had a literature faculty who was teaching a course in Southern literature who brought his students on the trip. And so again, another completely different perspective. So each trip is unique and different and yet they evolve and get better each time. - You said 112 of their peers. Are you saying that in a typical trip currently, 112 of them will travel together for this? - Yes, two buses of 112 folks if we fill. And we almost always do. In January we had a slightly smaller group of 78 students I think, but typically 100 to 112 students are on the trip. - And you mentioned they come from a number of studies. Is there any demographic identity that is particularly common to them or themes that are particularly important? Who chooses to go on this tour? - And that's a really, another really interesting thing. We have cross-section of majors, ages. And so for many students it's probably a more diverse group than they are in ever on the campus. So we have a number of students of color who have the opportunity to do it as a part of a learning community. It's definitely the trip is more physically diverse than our campus as a whole. And because we have students across ages and across majors, freshmen who don't necessarily get a chance to take classes with seniors are engaged in discussion with students who are older than they are, and then across majors. And for our older students who are in their major and not taking general education courses anymore, and get to see the same students over and over again it's a really diverse space. So they're really, really, really, I can't begin with a lot of release in one sentence, but it's a phenomenal way to see the students sort of go in from such variety of background and come out really having such a similar experience. - You mentioned Jodi, some kind of backlash that you've seen in the interim since 2008. What were you referring to specifically? - Well, certainly the incidents recently in Ferguson and Baltimore and the way in which we talk about those things as a society. I think people think that racism doesn't exist and yet our students are telling us every day the experience significant microaggressions that make them feel marginalized and othered. And then certainly our institutions are still racist. I mean, if a person submits a resume with a name that is stereotypically African American and then they put Mark Smith on the same resume, they're less likely, all of the research shows us that racism in our institutions still exist. And yet we keep acting like it doesn't. And I think that's the backlash really that I'm talking about. - Has there been any backlash directly about the program? I mean, that the university shouldn't be doing this kind of thing because it's social justice oriented. - No, we've had tremendous amount of support both from the campus as well as from our donors. Much of our trip is donor funded and people are really committed to helping our students to be more multi-culturally competent. We know that they're gonna go out into the workforce that's very diverse and we live in a global economy. Our students need to be prepared to navigate that. And this trip in 10 days does so much to help them to be more equipped to navigate a more multicultural world. - You said Jody that the students themselves prepare the itinerary, they work this out. I assume you've given the information from previous years so that they don't have to start from scratch every year. But are there new pilgrimage sites about your journey that have been added that it's surprised you or that have been particularly part of you increasing your learning curve? - Well, every time I learn something new, which is why I keep going, I think this last year we had the opportunity to go to Pittsburgh and learn about the Civil War, which was new for me, I hadn't had that chance to do those things. And since we have been going on a trip, many of the places including Selma, which is one of the students most favorite spots, have had some additional construction, the development of additional sites. So as we as a community, as a country have tried to capture and cement this memory so that it's not lost as our foot soldiers of the movement are starting to pass away, we want to make sure that memory is not lost. And so there are more opportunities to experience it in Georgia, for instance, in Atlanta. They've just opened a civil and human rights museum that didn't even exist when we started our trip. And so we were just able to go. It just opened this year. So we were able to go for the first time in January and then again in March. So we have new things that are being built and created. The wonderful museum in Memphis has just been completely renovated and it's a much better space today than it was five years ago. So yes, lots of new learning every time. - I was talking with the student who's gone on the tour the past two years, Kirsten Bauer. And she mentioned particularly Selma, some of the things that were important to her. And she talked about Rosa Parks. And she alluded to, but actually didn't fill in the information. The backstory about Rosa Parks, it wasn't just some day that she was on the bus and she said, you know, my feet are tired, I'm not gonna move. She had training at the Highlander Center. Have any of the tours gone in that direction? - We haven't gone to the Highlander Folk School, but we, you know, we study, the course that I teach really focuses on women of the civil rights movement. And we really sort of deconstruct their stories. Actually, for many students, learn them for the first time and then start to look critically at why those stories haven't been told. And when a story has been told, but watered down as the Rosa Parks story has, why does our education system or society do that? You know, what makes it palpable for a tired old lady to start a bus boycott, but not a trained civil rights worker? Why can we consume it differently? And the students really think critically about that. They have phenomenal discussions about why that happened then and begin to look at some examples of how that's happening today. What I hear from the students over and over and over again, and while I'm on the trip I buy in every site, books for my kids, teachers, you know, curriculum material at age appropriate levels. I have four children and I'm constantly bringing those books back 'cause the students tell me over and over again, why don't I know this? Why didn't I learn this? This matters. This is important history that's relevant. I should know this. And so I'm really trying to help my kids, teachers, to find ways to infuse it into the curriculum because kids, students are telling us these are stories I should have heard. They would influence and inspire and change me. And if we just hear about Rosa Parks with tired old lady and Martin Luther King, this phenomenal orator, we miss so much of the story that's relevant to the individual 'cause so much of the movement was women and children and teenagers and college students. And these students are seeing people who were them back in the day making change and the students begin to think, oh, I could make some change too. - I asked Kirsten question that I think maybe it'd be interesting to have your input in since you're associate dean of students. A number of the people that we're talking about in the civil rights movement, they violated the law. They marched when they didn't have a permit and they went into the Woolworths' door and sat down at the lunch counters and so on. So those were violations of the law and the law isn't always just as we know and certainly segregation is part of it. I asked Kirsten if she would be willing to break the law in terms of pursuit of justice. And she was pretty hesitant about it. Of course, it's a last resort, that kind of thing. What do you think your students go away with in terms of perspective about our system, which sometimes I think can be unjust? - I think they believe it to be unjust sometimes and we've had a number of campus rallies and many of the students who go on a trip or the students are advocating for increased access and increased opportunities. The students who take my course come back and do a social justice project. Some of those social justice projects are positive and proactive and some of them are reactive and marches and rallies. And I think if things are unjust we need to challenge them and find ways to get people to hear our voices. And so that may be at odds with my role on the campus but I think as an educator, whether in my associate dean role or whether teaching the course, we have to teach students to find their voice and use it. That's, I think, coming upon me as an educator to do that, our world's gonna be so much better if we do. - There's so much that we could talk about. I think all the civil rights would be gained but in this case I'm particularly interested in this program that you're involved in and actually maybe I wanted to talk a little bit about blue gold beginnings as well because it seems to me that there's so many ways that we can make social justice available, make it expected, understood. Was it easy to get that into the university, blue gold beginnings and the civil rights pilgrimage? Is that an expected part of the whole structure of UW Eau Claire? - I think the expected structure of the campus is that you will engage in your passions and engage students in inquiry related to those. So we have scientists who are doing incredible research and they're engaging students in that research. We have nurses who are doing phenomenal practice and they're engaging students in that. So that's absolutely part of the fabric of our campus culture. And one of the reasons why I love this place in spite of winter, which I hate. We have incredible students and are really engaged in supportive structure that allows you to sort of reach your goals and dreams. And so that isn't to say that some things haven't been without a fight. But that's my job to help people to see why it could work. - So you must know something about the Eau Claire Selma exchange program that's coming up. I'm curious if you have some connection to that number one and number two, what that means in terms of students actually spending some time in Selma, you kind of sweep through very quickly. - We do and we really talk about that where we're a voyeur on history and we're really just coming through and what we need to make sure that we do more than just that, right? So going back to our communities, some of our students choose to participate in the Eau Claire Selma exchange. So a student, for instance, might go on the civil rights program in January and then go on the trip where we take, we take a bus photo students to Selma and they spend a whole week working there doing service, but then also learning, they learn that king nonviolence, they go through that training and they do a little bit more understanding of history, but they also learn a lot about the issues today. And a couple of those students actually have applied to be interns and go back and spend time with the Freedom Foundation in Selma this coming summer and a couple of our students have been selected for that opportunity, which is very exciting. And then bringing those students from Selma here to be a part of our campus experience, we've brought them two years now and they'll come back again in June, which we're very, very excited that we have that opportunity to host them for a whole week and build those relationships and make those connections. And that's really driven out of our students. They wanted to do more, they didn't just want to go through Selma for two days, they wanted to get to know people and build relationships. So the Selma project came out of my class, the January class last this past year with you before, their social change project was to develop an Eau Claire Selma exchange. - If people wanna connect up with that, what should they be looking for? What links should I put on my site? - We have Facebook sites for the Eau Claire Selma exchange and the students are working with some of our community members to develop a website as well. And they'll be press release from Eau Claire with information about how to get involved. We obviously have to fundraise to help with travel and transportation for our friends from Selma to come and then we're also looking for host families to host folks when they get here. So find us on Facebook, Eau Claire Selma exchange. - And again, there's a number of places across the country and I mentioned them at the beginning. So in Methodist University in Dallas and in Illinois and in Wright State University in Ohio. All of these people are doing the civil rights pilgrimage type experience. Are there other places who are doing something like the Selma Eau Claire exchange program? - I don't know. A lot of folks go to Selma. Selma, the Freedom Foundation hosts thousands of students for alternate spring break experiences. I'm not sure who's bringing the folks from Selma to their communities after they go on those alternative spring breaks. - One of the things that for me is so important in terms of fueling a lifelong energy for social justice is how you see the universe. Often that comes out in people as a religious or spiritual conception they have of themselves. Do you have religious, spiritual, philosophical identity for yourself that's been important along the years in forming who you are? - Yeah, I was raised and it continued to practice Catholicism although there's certainly some things about Catholicism that don't work for me. The notion that we're all in this together and we're all better when everyone is well cared for which is a huge tenant of the Catholic church is a big part of who I am. And just the ability to connect with other people who want to make the world better. I feel that through my faith daily. Although I don't think that faith has to be a mutually exclusive I think you can be agnostic and be a change maker, so. - Certainly, even though I've been Quaker since I've been an adult, I grew up Catholic and had a really wonderful experience of it. Actually, I attribute to it much of what makes me good about what I am today. So I have no beasts that way. But the theology and some of the practice of the church including the fact that I think in Catholic church, women kind of get second class status. Given that mixed history, I'm so unheartened by what Pope Francis is doing. How have you been reacting to what he's been bringing forth into the church? - Very positively and he can let women become priests and recognize gay marriage and I'll be 100% on board. (laughing) - Maybe next year. (laughing) - We can keep praying. (laughing) - Well, it's wonderful work that you're doing again with the whole civil rights pilgrimage, the blue gold beginnings which we didn't talk too much about but which is really wonderful work in its own. And teaching women's studies and in so many ways enabling the best for students here in Eau Claire. And of course, you've got counterparts doing this all over the country in so many schools and it's so heartening for those of us who care about social justice. Again, folks, we've been speaking with Jodi Tessing Ritter as she is the associate dean of students at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire. She's headed up since 2008, the civil rights pilgrimage. Again, it's all wonderful work Jodi. Thank you so much for doing that and thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action. - Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to be with you. - A pleasure to have Jodi Ticing Ritter with us and there are major, major important bonus excerpts from my interview with Jodi on the northernspiritradio.org site. Please check them out. We've got one more guest located down in Selma, Alabama. But first, I want to remind you that you're listening to Spirit in Action, a Northern Spirit radio production. I'm Mark Helpsmute and you can find us on the web at northernspiritradio.org. Along with about 10 years of our programs for free listening and download, comments on the programs, add your own when you visit and make the conversation two way, links to and info about our guests like to the civil rights pilgrimage and programs related to today's guests. And there's a support option to make this program possible. But even before you donate to Northern Spirit radio, please remember to support your local community radio station with your hands and your wallet. A vitally needed alternative to the skimpy and limited news and music of mainstream stations. We've already visited with a student participant of the civil rights pilgrimage and just now the faculty founder of the program. And last up is Joanne Bland, resident of Selma, Alabama and a local participant of and speaker about the monumental historical events of Selma since the early 1960s. Joanne Bland joins us by phone from Selma, Alabama. Joanne, thank you so much for joining me today for Spirit in Action. - Well, thank you for having me. I thought it was pretty important to have someone from on the receiving end of the civil rights pilgrimage as well as a couple of people who've participated in it from up here. How long have you been doing the kind of talking and presentations that you do with journeys for the soul? - We have journeys for the soul began in 2007 when I opened the company and realized that's what I wanted to do. Just be your people and share the lessons of the past. Being there is youth groups prior to that. I saw the impact learning those lessons and realizing the young people realizing that they had the same strength that we had to affect change. I said, that's what I wanted to do. So I tried it and it worked. - And you're one of three people for the Speakers Bureau. There's you and Perkins and Linda Lowery. You want to talk about the assortment of you who are part of that group? - Okay, well, let's start with Linda Lowery. Linda Lowery is my oldest sister and she was the one who actually was with me because she was my babysitter during the '60s. And she had to take me where she went. So that's how I got involved in being at events that 50 years later, so important. She also wrote a book called "Turning 15 on the Road of Freedom" because she had on the second day of the march and sent to my government. She had her 15th birthday. She was the youngest recorded in March. That was the biggest death of the way. - James Perkins was our first African-American mayor here. We grew up together here in Selma. And we finally elected our African-American mayor of the dominant African-American town in the year 2000. And he breaks us with his presence for four years. And hopefully, we'll run again. - Okay. And so they're part of your Speakers Bureau for Junies for the Soul. - Yeah, we have others like, Mrs. Love Those Children, Mary, and Tony Love. Mrs. Love was killed. And their mom was killed transporting marches back from the Selma to my government march. There's a free area, we can do this. And it's very good, like you say. You know, the slavery portion of our history. She doesn't have a wonderful reenactment, but the pilgrimage takes part in each year. It's amazing. She makes you the slave. And you're experienced the labor, yes. It was, no matter what you thought about it going in, you had an idea what slavery was when you came out. There's also Billie Jean Young, Dr. Young, the playwright who wrote, he just started a play like Fannie Lou Payne didn't say. Billie has been doing Fannie Lou for over 30 years. I can not tell if she is Fannie Lou Payne. And she did her recent play, Jimmy Lee. It's about Jimmy Jackson who was killed in Mary. And in February of 1965. And his death became the catalyst for the Selma to Montgomery March. So I'm really, really proud of the speakers, Bill. - So let me just flesh out a little bit about this. You were pretty much of a youngster at the time that marched from Selma to Montgomery. How old were you at that time? - In 1965, I was 11 years old. But my involvement again long before that was my grandmother, who joined the Dallas County voters league around 1959. They just didn't start with the march. It started the long, long time before that. The league was formed by Amelia Boynton and Arizona Sam Boynton, who were our farm extension agents. They recognized that we had a voice in the political arena to take some of those laws that weren't fair to us as African-Americans in the United States. So they organized this organization. And grandmother would take us to the meeting. I thought they were boring because my teacher had told me that Abraham Lincoln freaked the slaves. And they were talking about getting freedom. I thought I was the smartest person in the room. (laughing) - Well, who knows, could have been. You must be pretty smart. It says on your website that by the time that you were 11 years old, you had been arrested, documented 13 times. That wasn't a typo or something, was that? - No, it wasn't. And I was that far not the youngest person arrested. In fact, the first time I was arrested, I was arrested along with my grandmother. And I was only eight years old. And that one was not in the documentation. But it started when I was eight years old. - And what were you arrested for? What kind of stuff? - Parade and without the myth, unlawful assembly. That's the two I do remember. - So it wasn't for throwing rocks at cars or something really fun. - No, but I used to do that too. (laughing) - I like to take a piece of it, I had a normal child who was just these other lily mint fields. (laughing) - Was this a thing to do for the youth in the mid 1960s, you know, to go out and march and get arrested? Was this something that a lot of teenagers would do? - You know, Snake was here before Dr. King came. The student nonviolent coordinate community. And they started to organize young people. And when we found out we could have a party and getting this thing called freedom, we wanted to do it too. We wanted to march and how march is enough for the First Baptist Church mostly because Dr. King's headquarters was at Brown Chapel. The church I grew up in and the First Baptist on the next corner. And I started going down to the meeting 'cause my sister, that's a part I like. The part I like with the marching, we knew we were not old enough to register, that we would go and they'd lock the doors and we would kneel on the steps of the poor down. And someone would pray to the Creator that they'd lift the hearts of those equal means. So parents could vote for us and we could vote for us in. - My sense is that a lot of the activism that marches, the demonstrations, all of the efforts, it often flowed out from churches now. And I think things have become less and less church connected. A lot of people don't want to have anything to do with church. There's a lot of young people these days, particularly. - How much was it from your point of view, a church-based movement? - It was a church-based movement. Remember, it was doing segregation. It was limited places, we could gather. Been large numbers and hear anything. Pretty much less alone on Sundays. So the ministers had a radio audience, a captive audience. Well, you were there at least out in the head, it was not too out, sitting there. So that's why it centered around there. There was nowhere else we could meet. There wasn't difficulty as we have today where you can go and have a meeting. The church was the largest editor. They tended around there. And then our ministers at that time were leaders in the movement. Dr. King was a minister. So naturally our ministers all came out. Particularly with Dr. King as he is. This movement was all primarily by women, the children. - You know, Joanne, we're going to have a full-length visit with you later on. You're going to be coming to Eau Claire in October. And sometime before that, I want to have a full conversation with you so we can put it on the air here on WHOIS radio here. But of course, you travel all over the nation, really speaking. And so listeners, wherever you are, Joanne Bland may be coming to your area. You were 11, I think, at the time of the march from Selma and Bloody Sunday, right? You were there for that? - Right. - I was kind of hoping you were not in the front lines of the people being beat up, but did you have to face physical attacks on yourself then? - I was definitely, if you were there, you would have felt a good environment. I wasn't expecting violence. I had no idea there would be violence. My sister told me later that they're in the church to just when they were prepared to march that there was a possibility of violence. I had no idea what that problem was outside pulling in the phone. When we lined up, I just got in the line, 'cause that's part of the march. We didn't get to the degree. And potatoes, police were lined up across all four lines, and I knew we were not going to Montgomery. (laughing) And I saw them once on the third of the road, and I saw them on horses, which I had never noticed before. And I was too far back to hear what was being seen by John Lewis the whole day of Williams. And when they had permission to pay us, it was the night, and they went down on, they were supposed to go down on their knees. I was waiting for them to go down because that was normal procedure. And so I went with, say, a friend here, we'd stand up and go back to where we started. Of course, that didn't happen because the truth was that they advanced and thought beating people. I thought the tear gas was gunshots. I thought they were killing the people that I was throwing. I had no idea that it was tear gas. And by the time the tear gas got to us, there was really panic. I really panicked because now it's burning my eyes. I can't breathe. I can't see. And these people are beating people. But I remember the most of the screams in the car was being like the last of any turn. - And so that was, that's your maybe 13th time. Maybe you were arrested then. I don't even actually know if you were arrested. - You were not arrested, don't do it again. - Just mistreated. - You put it mildly. - Yeah, well, I'm a mild-mannered person. I am a quake, or after all. So my question is, you get that kind of mistreatment. Did that encourage you to go on in other marches? Or didn't that kind of make you say maybe this isn't so much fun as I thought it was? - My dad had told me that if I didn't go back that would mean they won't, so I went back. That I was scared. When Dr. King turned around, I probably was the older person on the barriers that was glad he did you. - Okay. (laughs) Well, I'm gonna talk to you about all of this in length, Joanne, when they have you on in a couple months. But one last thing I wanted to ask you about was the National Voting Rights Museum that's in Selma. You're a co-founder and former director of it. Tell me what it is. - We wanted a place to capture our history because we felt that generations of, one or two generations of their paths without having the benefit of knowing the battle that we had gone through to get them where they are today. So one day, the president, he's been out, president of the museum, Roseanne, that said to me, he said, "Ann, that's my husband's name." And let's open the museum and I'm like, I have a pair of legal. She's an attorney and we're gonna open the museum. Okay. But he's the type of person that does throw something out there before you know it is your idea. (laughs) You know, you're working on it like a Hebrew to try to make it come true. And in it, and it came, we opened without funding and we've had, myself, almost been there twice. Hillary's been there and Clinton's been there. Clinton's been there three times. The president, Clinton's been there three times. And of course, I can't go without saying that without the University of Wisconsin coming, a lot of the work would not have been done. We wouldn't have been able to do that. We also opened the slavery museum. They did the bulk of the work and it wouldn't be a museum today if it had not been to Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin and I think. - Well, it's wonderful they have this connection. From Eau Claire, Wisconsin down to Selma is just, in some ways it feels a great big cultural leap. But on the other hand, the bonds of the heart, I think are really strong. - Oh my goodness. And what wonderful young people compare. Joe's physics is exceptional. You know, they want to heal. They want to do things and it's just amazing. And what a wonderful group of people. It just feels me up to think about it sometime. - Well, I think you're feeding their souls too when they come down. I think that's why you draw so many people. There's a waiting list here at the University for all the people who want to connect with someone who's living the witness as you have lived it for so many years. I want to thank you for that witness, what you've been doing. - Let me tell you this story before you go. I get a radio show in Madison. This is John Quinn. - And he had some of the young people to call me and he went down and went, "Come here." - When you say it to you, it's so cool. - And when I did, they get on and they tell me whatever their experience it was and that other other. - Everyone that I'm talking about the things. (laughing) - Every one of them talked about the food. Oh, and this man, you gotta take us back to that place where we ate, I was like, "Okay." (laughing) So I think these were probably the same than theirs, but they keep it tucked, so I know they're doing things. Not just in general, but in the community and no prayer and in Wisconsin and general. - Yes, they are. And again, thanks for your work on that. Again, we've been speaking with Joanne Bland. You can find her on the website, Joannebland.com. She provides speaker bureau. And when you tour down there, you can see the National Voting Rights Museum. And there's a lot more going on in Selma, Alabama. We're so fortunate that there have been people like you passing on the history, the first-hand experience like you had on the march from Selma to Montgomery way back in 1965. Again, Joanne, it's wonderful work you're doing. You're feeding our souls and feeding our stomachs. Thank you for doing that. And thank you for joining me for Spirit in action. - You're quite welcome. One last reminder of the links and all the bonus excerpts of our interviews with Kirsten, Jodi, and Joanne, which you'll find on the NorthernSpiritRadio.org site, a major amount of riches that didn't fit in this broadcast. Enjoy them, and we'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. - The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. (upbeat music) ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]
A visit with a student participant of, the UW-EC staff founder of, and a Selma, AL, presenter of the Civil Rights Pilgrimage.