Area youth will mix with civil rights-era veterans on Saturday for a historical commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Burglund High School walkout of October 1961.
The Young People’s Project of McComb, one of the offshoots of civil rights figure Bob Moses’ national project, is taking the lead.
“What we’re looking for is for the veterans of the civil rights movement to come out and share their stories to inspire students of today,” said Lisa Deer, the project coordinator. “Our theme is commemorate our past, celebrate our present and inspire our future.”
The Young People’s Project of McComb is composed of students from across Pike County, who will get a real-life lesson on race relations from the 1960s to present-day.
The event commemorates the day that 119 black students walked off the Burglund campus (now Higgins Middle School) to protest principal C.D. Higgins’ decision not to re-admit then 16-year-old Brenda Travis.
Travis, Ike Louis and Robert Talbert were arrested on Aug. 20, 1961. The trio had bought tickets at the Greyhound bus station in McComb but refused to leave their seats in the “whites only” waiting room.
All three were found guilty of disturbing the peace, fined and sentenced to jail. That sit-in was the second such attempt to desegregate areas in Pike County.
The students, ranging from age 13 to 19, marched from the high school to City Hall, where they were arrested for breaching the peace. They were expelled from Burglund High for the remainder of the year. Because seniors — Travis among them — weren’t able to finish school at Burglund, many went on to receive diplomas from the private J.D. Campbell College in Jackson, whose president, Dr. Robert M. Stevens, invited the students to enroll.
In 2006, McComb High School held a special recognition program at graduation to honor those who walked out and to present them with diplomas from the McComb School District.
Deer said students involved in the Young People’s Project are from McComb High School, North Pike, South Pike, Parklane Academy, Southwest Mississippi Community College, Ole Miss and Mississippi State University.
All events will be held at Higgins. Registration is at 10 a.m., followed by opening ceremonies. Driving tours to civil rights stops begin at 12:30 p.m. Also on the program will be workshops, exhibits, oral history projects and voter registration. Saturday is the last day to register to vote in the upcoming elections.
Vendors will sell lunches at Higgins at 11.
Deer said she expects 100 to 120 students to be involved, as well as 100 to 150 adults.
“We’re planning for about 300 people.” she said.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Community of Promise grant provides the seed money for programs that seek to boost racial equality, explore local historical events and help the underserved in local communities. The foundation has undertaken a concentration in Mississippi, where disparities between men and women, blacks and whites has been evident.
Saturday’s Burglund recognition will be another step toward community healing.
The day includes a driving tour of civil rights hot spots in McComb, with the first bus tour at 12:30 p.m. Everything else will be at Higgins. On the slate are oral history projects, workshops by local youth organizations, a civil rights voter registration and a brief march from Higgins to the Masonic temple on Denwiddie Street.
Deer said the City of McComb has supported the event by opening up the old jail in the basement of City Hall and cleaning it out for visitors.
“We found out about the 50th anniversary through work from the Kellogg’s Foundation’s Community of Promise,” Deer said. “I’m doing community outreach and to support the oral history portion.
“What I really want people to know is how youth organizers put this together,” Deer said. “They spent months and months on work, researching and coordinating efforts on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the community to pull together information we needed. We’re looking for an exploration of our history and a partnership-mentorship between the youth of today and the youth of 1961.”
