The Civil Rights act of 1964 triggered desegregation in the public schools and when Martin Luther King came to Chicago in January of that same year, whatever illusions he may have entertained about the North being less hostile towards his work was shattered - literally.

Today, I’d like to believe that if I understood then what I know now, I would have had the courage to join in the movement, maybe a march. I’d like to blame it all on ignorance, but I’m afraid that I was too emerged in my tribe’s narrative at the time to even appeal to courage, or to understand the injustice of Jim Crow.

Our bus pulled into the city of Jackson Mississippi this morning, and we gathered into the historic hall of the M. W. Stringer Grand Lodge and now headquarters for the NAACP. Waiting for us was a collection of veterans of the civil rights era, octogenarians all, several of whom participated in those Freedom Rides. We met in the great hall of the Lodge where in 1964, the height of the Civil Rights movement, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was formed - a diverse coalition of Mississippians who recognized the injustice of a ruling Democrat party made up exclusively of whites in a state where blacks were a majority of the population. Just 40% was white.

Our speakers fell into five categories: Freedom Riders, Freedom Workers, The Freedom Party, Black Power and the On-going struggle. In 1961, Deloris Lynch Williams rode with Rev. James Bevel, the passionate man who led the early sit-ins. She followed and spent 11 terrifying days in jail. Hollis Watkins, as a boy, dared enter a public library (whites only) and was forcefully removed by a police officer. Later, he was jailed for sitting at the counter in a local Woolworths. Emma Sanders, our host’s Sunday School Teacher and well into her 90s, taught her children to stand up like Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego against the government’s demand that they bow the knee to laws that denied them access to a full American life. One year, because of her influence and example, they made her Grand Marshall of Jackson’s annual parade.

My personal favorite was Flonzie (Barbara) Brown-Wright. She took to the microphone with an air of supreme confidence and made an impassioned speech about the sacred duty of the right to vote.

Flonzie was here when Black Power was launched in this room; but it is not to be confused with the militancy of the Black Panthers. Black Power meant the right to vote. While the 15th Amendment passed just after the Civil War gives every (male) citizen voting rights, the South put up every imaginable road-block possible. The primary civil right for blacks in the South would be the voting right. From this very room in Jackson, Flonzie led her people to fight the poll tax, the impossible registration exams and fought for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

She called us out – not just to vote, but to become activists in every election.

Justice hangs in the balance, she said.

Our bus pulled away from Jackson on to a small town in rural Mississippi and a City Hall archive, the Hall of Records. Outside the classic red brick three story government building stood a prominent Civil War Memorial, erected in 1916. Waiting for us in the Hall of Records was the famed Dr. Antoinette Harrell with her team of research assistants.

It was all in a day’s work, and we were invited to witness. She has devoted her life to finding law breakers who re-engaged a new kind of slavery since the Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became law back in 1864. There is no shortage of cases: exploitation, brutality, abuse and theft. But getting past the cultural and power structures of resistance is no small task. Cancer took one of her legs – she works off crutches. Vice News featured her work in a powerful video. We spent the afternoon hearing about the ongoing exploitation labor in rural areas.

She took us to the Emmett Till Museum in Glendora, out in the back country.

When his mother Mamie sent her boy Emmett to visit family in Money, MS in 1955, she failed to warn 14-year-old Emmett to avoid any association with whites while there. When he dropped into the local market, he spoke gleefully with 21 year-old Carolyn Bryant, and on the way out the door, he let out with a wolf whistle – loud enough for the neighborhood to take notice. We heard his friends, now aging men, recall the moment via video. The two local pals knew immediately that Emmett had crossed a red line, and there would be consequences. They attempted escape.

The rest is well known. Emmett was brutally murdered and tossed into the Tallahatchie River with a heavy weight tied around his neck. When the body was recovered, his face was so badly battered, he was nearly unrecognizable. Back in Chicago, his mother insisted that the coffin be open for all to see. The gruesome image sparked outrage and became an icon for the Civil Rights movement. Ten thousand people showed up for the funeral.

We stood on the grounds where Emmet was abducted by Roy Bryant (Carolyn’s husband) and his half-brother J.W. Milam. They were charged with murder, and promptly acquitted by an all-white jury.

It was a heavy day. I grieve over my lack of understanding and lack of courage back when I was nineteen. But what about now?

Some might say I’m indulging in “white guilt.”

I’d rather call it lament.

Dr. Harrell, in a passionate speech reminded us that these are things we just don’t want to talk about. All of us would rather move on to something else.

She is right: we don’t.

But we must.