When Brenda Travis took part in civil rights protests in the 1961, she got kicked out of school and thrown into jail.
More than 50 years later, with the barriers of segregation that she fought against removed, she said it pains her to see educational opportunities being taken for granted, and she has decided to do something about it.
On Saturday, she was back in her native Baertown neighborhood to celebrate the opening of the Brenda Travis Foundation at 415 McComb St., a community education center where children and their parents can get resources to bolster academics.
“That’s one of the premises of my foundation, to teach the children. But before we teach the children, we have to teach the parents,” Travis told an audience of about 50 people. “This door is open to the community. ... This foundation is here for you.”
Travis was one of five students who protested segregation in 1961 simply by going where they had not been allowed because of the color of their skin.
“We sat in at the F.W. Woolworth store. We tested the Interstate Commerce Law, and we were arrested. And we were dubbed the McComb 5,” she said.
After a stint in jail and eventual expulsion from school she attended J.P. Campbell College in Jackson, a safe haven for young activists who ended up in similar situations. She eventually moved to California.
Travis said that after all that she and others had been through during the turbulent 1960s, younger generations seem to have little understanding or appreciation for those sacrifices, and for their heritage.
“Young people are ashamed of their blackness. They don’t want to be black,” she said. “Little babies, who can hardly speak, looking at their skin or feeling their hair, saying, ‘I don’t want to be black.’ ”
Travis said it’s up to parents to teach children to read, and about their history.
“Why haven’t you told them about the slaves who built that house, the White House?” she said. “Other people claim it, but it is our house.”
Travis said she also hopes the center, which has a library of donated books, can serve as an an point of revitalization for Baertown.
“So far Baertown has been the stepchild of McComb, but we want McComb to know that Baertown is stepping up, and we’re stepping out,” she said.
Travis’ brother, James Kate, who introduced various speakers at Saturday’s open house, said he hopes the center can inspire positive change in the community.
“We see people walking the streets everyday, young people walking the streets every day, and you know, they seem to be aimless,” he said. “We are a community and we want to help anybody, especially the school system.”
His daughter Camita Dillon-Nobles, who is Otken Elementary School’s principal and a board member for the Travis Foundation, said the sacrifices of activists “has not gone unnoticed, it has not gone in vain. I am living proof.
“We have to try to motivate our students and our children, and the way we do that is being models,” Dillon-Nobles said.
Retired educator Hilda Casin expressed hope and encouragement for the center, noting that Travis was once “a lonely, frightened, terrified, confused teenager” sitting in a jail cell.
“I thought of how she must have wondered about how her textbook said that all men are created equal, but when she and another student walked into a certain side of a bus station, they were taken to jail,” Casin said. “I thought of the bravery, courage, unity of spirit of Burglund High School students who challenged the system in support of Brenda Travis.
“Brenda has carried her cross.”
Casin said the foundation “will provide a treasure of knowledge and information as to who we are and how our presence has shaped and reshaped our world. This foundation of knowledge is needed.”
While Saturday’s event was focused on education for the future, it also was a reflection of the past.
Hollis Watkins Muhommod, who also demonstrated with Travis, denounced “a lack of action” that seems to be happening against fixing disparities that exist in black communities today.
“Fear is our number-one problem,” he said. “We are afraid to stand up for what we know is right. We are praying to do what we know is right. ... Don’t allow that fear to keep you from doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done.”
Muhommod led the audience in singing several of the freedom songs, including “I Ain’t Scared of Nobody Because I Want My Freedom,” which featured verses about police attack dogs and jails.
“They said to us if you don’t turn around and go back, we’re going to put all of you in jail,” he said. “The jail was a very scary place for black folks, especially for black men, because some of the went in and never made it out.”
McComb Mayor Whitney Rawlings noted he was 11 when Travis was arrested and her classmates held walkouts.
“I didn’t know what was up and down,” he said. “I know that at city hall you were not welcome, so today, I welcome you t the city of McComb, and this is your home, and this is a fine thing you do in our community, to educate the parents, to lift our children up.
“I know that time heals a lot of wounds, and I pray as you do that our children get it, and they can live together side by side,” he said.
As McComb poet Emily Rembert read her poem “The Burglund High School walkout of 1961,” she talked about how Travis’ life has come full circle, from a person who faced torment for standing up for what she believed in to somewhat of an historic icon today.
As the poem concluded, it noted vast changes in the way Travis had been treated then and how she is regarded now: “Take a ride through Baertown, down Brenda Travis Street,” Rembert read.
