This trip has felt like a movie up until last night. You see the good and bad, the protagonists and the antagonists, you start with pain and end with freedom. Freedom, however, has not been achieved and that is abundantly clear, but it feels possible. Standing across from the Edmund Pettus bridge the movie vanished into the spanish moss of the surrounding trees underneath. We stood next to the bridge and talked and it was afterwards that I stepped off to the side and began to reflect. I looked into the trees and thought about how those same trees could have been the sites of a lynching. This made me think about how deeply seeded racism can be. It moves beyond physical presence and for a person who experiences violence it can move into the presence of even nature. A movie or a trip can begin and end, racism hasn't and its our job to make it so.
Joseph Gaylin
12th grade, City College
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