These are diary entries that I wrote throughout my ten-day Sojourn to the Past trip on February 14-23. Each entry is posted here two weeks after it was originally written, due to the provision that I didn’t have any computer or internet access during my trip. Be sure to check out my other Sojourn to the Past coverage. Enjoy.
I’m writing on the plane right now, up 30,000 or however many feet in the air, en route back to San Francisco. Aside from a near calamity with our return flights, today has been probably my favorite day of the trip, in which we really wrapped up and culminated on everything that we’ve learned over the past ten days.
We had another early morning, once again, and after breakfast, we went back to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, but this time, we went inside. We were given special players and headphones which amounted essentially to a guided audio tour of the museum, which was a very big museum to walk through. Going through it was like walking back through everything that we had learned for one last time, starting with an exhibit on slavery and various defining events before the Civil Rights Movement began, and then going through further exhibits for each of the major phases of the Civil Rights Movement. The movement then culminated up on the top floor where you could see (through the plexi-glass windows) the two rooms in the motel that were restored to what they were like on April 4, 1968. The room on the left (room 307) was where Dr. King normally stayed (although he didn’t stay in that room in April 1968 because it was occupied), and was a fully made room. The room on the right (room 306) was the room where Dr. King was staying, and was recreated as it would have been at the particular moment, including the sheets partially uncovered, dishes left on the desk, etc. From the observing area we could also see the balcony where he was shot, including the spot where his head hit the ground. That particular spot had been permanently stained because of how much blood there had been, that they replaced that spot with a brick because the blood stain had been too painful to look at at the time.
After we finished going through the museum, we went into an auditorium at the museum where we were greeted by Rev. Billy Kyles, who had been with Dr. King that evening that he was shot in Memphis. He did talk briefly about the evening that Dr. King was shot, but he mostly talked preached about the importance of having dreams, following our dreams, “holding fast” to them. He frequently brought up his favorite quote from Langston Hughes: “Hold fast to your dreams. For if dreams die, you are like broken-winged birds that cannot fly.” His message was really captivating, and you could feel it when, after he spoke, we gave him an eight-minute standing ovation.
After that, we had lunch and the opportunity to personally meet Rev. Kyles, but then we moved on to the wrap-up activity of the trip, and probably may very favorite part of this trip. All 150 of us made a big circle around the room, and then we each had the opportunity to share the biggest strength that we learned and how we were going to apply it when we went home. However, many of us (including myself) took the opportunity to share a personal story of something that affected them, and how what they had learned on this trip had made them look at it in a different way. There were a number of students there that had been struggling to deal with divorced parents and who had had hostility to one of them, but who decided that they were going to apologize and reconnect to their other parent when they got home. One of them said that the trip had helped her get over the grief of having to watch her best friend commit suicide. One of them had talked about how he and his family had built up so much hatred and resentment towards African Americans because of atrocities that a few African American men had done to his family, but that this trip shattered his hate and that he was going to try to live a new life. It was very emotional for many of us, but whenever it got emotional, a number of friends came up to console that person. (And yes, there were plenty of tissue boxes kept handy.) But it was a very special moment for me in a number of ways. First, it really helped to bridge the connection between this trip, the civil rights movement, and everything that I had done, seen, and learned over the past ten days to my life today, and really made clear just how much all of it has to do with our lives. It also helped to remind me how we often make judgments based on what we see on the outside, but just how much more there is on the inside. When I learned about some of the stories that the others shared–these other people who had been complete strangers to me just nine days ago–I ended up looking at them in a completely different light. Even one of the students from my school, who I’ve known for a long time (she’s been a regular volunteer with the Aragon Peace Club), shared a story. She’s the kind of person that you can recognize at school by her big smile and always bright attitude, but she shared about the suffering that she privately goes through inside while her parents are constantly fighting, and she was one of the many who broke down emotionally. For me, those three hours in that circle was by far the most enthralling part of the trip, and probably the part that I will remember most of all.
After wrapping up the trip by singing “We Shall Overcome” as a group, we left for Memphis International Airport, where we proceeded with check in and then bought ourselves some dinner. We all had a flight from Memphis to Atlanta, at which point the Los Angeles folks connected on a flight to LAX, and we connected on a flight to SFO. (The New York folks are staying in Memphis one more night and are flying home tomorrow.) However, our group pretty much filled almost all of the Memphis-Atlanta flight. Unfortunately, around the time that we were boarding prior to our 6 PM departure, we learned that our plane had a fuel leak, and that they were waiting for maintenance to come and fix it. We were worried that we would get stuck in Memphis, but luckily, they were able to fix the fuel leak so that we boarded at 7:00 and took off around 7:20. (Due to the large size of our group, Delta made the very wise move of asking our connecting flights to wait for us. The San Francisco layover had gone from 90 minutes to 10 minutes, and the Los Angeles layover had gone from 60 minutes to -20 minutes.) However, when we arrived in Atlanta, we hurried to our gate only to find out that our flight had been delayed anyway half an hour, so we were luckily able to catch our breath before we had to board.
We’ll be landing in San Francisco in a couple of hours (around 1 AM local time, about 21 hours after we woke up this morning!). It’s hard to believe that Sojourn to the Past is now over, but boy, it was an excellent experience, and certainly one that I’ll always remember.
Tags: AirPort, Delta, diaries, Dr. King, dreams, flight, Lorraine Motel, Memphis, National Civil Rights Museum, Rev. Billy Kyles, sharing, Sojourn to the Past, Tennessee
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