If there was one thing that organizers of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Burglund High School walkout want people to take from Saturday’s event, it’s a sense of inspiration and enlightenment.
Lisa Brown Deer, adult liaison for the Young People’s Project of McComb said, “If anything comes out of this we want people to know it is the love and inspiration that this event has brought our young people.”
Deer said students of the YPP have been working to collect oral histories, and through these interviews they made a special connection with the people involved in the walkout.
“They looked at them as teenagers, even though they were older and had gray hair,” Deer said. “They didn’t see that. They saw them as teenagers their age that did something very brave and they felt an instant connection with them.”
Deer said this is the first in a series of events that will commemorate the civil rights movement in Pike County.
“This is a launching of more events,” Deer said. “We will continue commemoration and do future panels and round-table discussions to educate youth and people in the community who want to learn about our part in civil rights history.”
McComb Mayor Whitney Rawlings spoke at the opening ceremony.
“You stood up for your beliefs. You were leaders. Your actions inspired others to take action,” Rawlings said.
The event was organized by the Young People’s Project of McComb, the Black History Gallery and local civil rights elders.
Among those on hand were members of what activist veteran Brenda Travis said was the McComb Five, one of the early springforms for the civil rights movement in Mississippi.
“We were dubbed the McComb Five because we did the first direct action in McComb and in Mississippi,” Travis said.
Travis and the others were noted as being the first Mississippians to test the civil rights act in the state. They organized sit-ins and were involved in getting people registered to vote.
Veteran activist Bobby Talbert of McComb said he, Travis, Curtis (Hayes) Mohammed, Ike Lewis and Hollis Watkins began the series of sit-ins in the summer of 1961.
Travis attempted to buy a ticket at the all-white counter at the Greyhound bus station and was jailed for more than 30 days.
“After being arrested, I came to enroll for school and found out that I had been expelled,” Travis said, “I didn’t understand. All of these activities were in the summer time and were not connected with school.”
Travis’s friends and schoolmates were indignant.
“We asked when she was coming back,” said former Burglund student, Earnestine Ridley Weatherspoon. “We were told she wasn’t. If she wasn’t going to be allowed to re-enter we would leave. It was our time. It was time for us to make a stand and integrate.
“I feel like if we hadn’t done it, things would not have changed,” Weatherspoon said.
Mohammed, one of the walkout organizers said, “What we were doing when we walked out was dreaming of a world that we wanted to live in.”
The days events happened at Higgins Middle School, formerly Burgland High School, and included oral histories, Burgland Walkout discussion panels, freedom song workshops, voter registration, seminars on education, youth organization and civil rights, a children’s story circle and bus tours of historical sites. The event ran from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with closing reflections and a commemorative walk of the Burgland march.
Deer said the next event is set for Nov. 4. For more information about the Young People’s Project visit www.typp.org, or e-mail Brown at lbrown@mccomblegacies.org.
