NCJ Number
155810
Journal
Harvard Educational Review Volume: 65 Issue: 2 Dated: special issue (Summer 1995) Pages: 231-257
Date Published
1995
Length
27 pages
Annotation
Racism, violence, and a civil rights tour are explored.
Abstract
During the summers of 1993 and 1994, groups of young people from the Boston area took part in an innovative educational initiative known as Project HIP-HOP (Highways into the Past: History, Organizing and Power). These students made a 5,000-mile journey south to visit key sites of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and to learn about the power of nonviolence from people who were teenagers or younger when they participated in the movement. This two- part article is about that journey. The first part, by the chief organizer of Project HIP-HOP, describes how the idea of a civil rights tour, with participants going into schools after the trip to share their experiences with their peers, evolved from efforts to encourage young people to explore racism, a root cause of the violence engulfing so many of their lives. The Project operates on the premise that a largely ahistorical outlook that focuses on violence as if it were unique to this generation of urban youth serves neither young people nor the country and its future. The second part by a participant in the Project in 1994 reflects on the lessons he learned from the trip. He writes about his own efforts to understand the racism around him and his encounters with the sites and the people of the civil rights movement. Notes