Gratitude

Dear Grammy and Popcorn,

I believe I owe you an explanation for how I'm spending this week. But first I'll have to explain how this week came to be different than any other week of my life. The Civil Rights Trip has been a part of Park School's high school experience for years. When I was in middle school, students that had returned from the trip that year would speak at assembly in February detailing the powerful experiences of their trip. For the longest time I believed that the trip was something for those who were well educated on the movement and were completely and openly the next leaders of the modern movement. I felt like I didn't belong anywhere near the trip. I was white, uneducated on the topic and powerless in my role as a privileged youth going to a predominantly white school.

However my senior year has come to represent a time of great confidence and discovery for me. I felt as though there were so many opportunities I had never taken advantage of during my previous three years of high school. So I auditioned and then performed in the school musical, Pirates of Penzance, and I applied to join the 2015 Civil Rights Trip. After long afternoons fundraising and many early morning meetings, the students from Park, City College High School, City Neighbors High School, and Cristo Rey High School finally raised the money necessary to make the trip happen. The night before, I sat in my room packing my clothing and I noted how the experience didn't even feel real. I didn't know what to expect but now that the fourth night of the trip has arrived, the experience feels so real and so raw.

We have met leaders of the Movement like Andrew Young and John Lewis. We have sat on the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church and we have walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge arm in arm singing freedom songs.
I keep returning to the thought that if I was a teenager in the 1960s, I can't guarantee that I would have the courage or even the empathy to join the Movement. A great fear of mine is that I would have been a privileged white woman reaping benefits of a racially segregated society and loving every minute of it because I didn't know any better. It's frightening to imagine.

I don't know exactly where I fit into this country's history of discrimination and racial violence, but I am confident in the conviction that I will always advocate tolerance, kindness and equal opportunity for everyone. I cried yesterday at the thought that I was powerless and insignificant in an age of "death culture," as one of our guest speakers highlighted. I have grown up in and will eventually have to face a culture where violence is glorified and hate has mobilized due to the technological revolution. Each and every one of the activists we have spoken with has told us that we are the future of this movement and of this country. It's a grand responsibility that I don't know how to handle. What role will I play? Do I have to be a hero? How do I reconcile my feelings of insignificance?

I don't have the answer right now, and I think that's okay. One thought that assures me and keeps me grounded is the knowledge that I am part of a smart, cunning, brave, intuitive and collaborative generation. Listening to my peers on this trip speak with such wisdom and good intent assures me that I am not alone in holding the responsibility of a nation and of a world's wellbeing. With the guidance of all those who came before us, we will answer when duty calls us. We shall exercise the rights that millions throughout this country's history have fought for, and we shall overcome any obstacle that we will inevitably face.

Your wisdom, my loving grandparents, has not fallen on deaf ears. You have helped create me and have given me the tools to succeed in all endeavors. Words cannot describe my gratitude.


Love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck,
Cookie Girl