Tuesday, May 29, 2001

By Teri Weaver

Sixteen high school students from Central New York have gone South to learn about the civil rights movement. They will talk with civil rights leaders who led boycotts and protests in the 1960s, meet with newly elected African-American officials and visit some of the monuments dedicated to those who worked to register black citizens to vote. Saff writer Teri Weaver will follow the group and chronicle their experiences.

Bottles of red-hot sauce and vinegar flavored with hot peppers adorned the lunch tables at the Ramada Inn in Memphis.

The vinegar goes on greens, and the hot sauce goes on just about everything else.

But the southern condiments remained untouched as 16 Central New York teens enjoyed their southern Sunday dinner: stewed green beans, black-eyed peas smothered in pot likker, sliced ham, well-done roast beef, creamed corn and sweet potatoes.

A group of Memphis teens met the New York group, who are traveling south this week to learn about the civil rights movement. The final destination on Sunday was Jackson, but a four-hour layover in Memphis provided an opportunity for a short visit with some Tennessee elected officials and a stop at the National Civil Rights Museum. It is set in the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed April 4, 1968.

"Walking through the museum, I was filled with utter disgust and hatred that was emitted from some of the prized photos. It angered me as I looked at white faces beaming with pride after a young, Negro boy's dead body lay bruised and burned under a tree. Not only did I feel sorry for the young boy, but, believe it or not, I felt sorry for the people who had committed such a heinous crime." - Charla Harlow, 17, junior, Henninger

Arthur Scott gave a call-and-response lesson in civil rights at the museum, eliciting answers from the tired, full teens. The tour guide explained how southern state governments denied AfricanAmericans full citizenship even after the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution demanded it: In 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes, having won the electoral college by only one vote, withdrew federal troops from the southern states in exchange for support for the presidency.

"What happens when the federal army leaves?" Scott asked.

"No protection," said Jareau Hall, a 16-year-old junior at Corcoran High School in Syracuse.

"That's right," Scott shouted, then mimicked a response from a 19th-century 911 dispatcher. "We're sorry, the police have moved way up north. Please call back later."

The students then walked by displays about the after-

math of that decision. A glass box in one room showed a full Ku Klux Klan costume of a white hood and robe with a red-and-black cross that would have rested above the wearer's heart. One sign indicating restrooms pointed in opposite ways for "white" and "colored."

A yellow and green Montgomery city bus allowed the kids to rest on seats just like the one Rosa Parks wanted to use.

Pressure on certain seats triggered a voice command: "Move to the back of the bus."

The finale was a replica of King's last motel room, as it was when he was killed. One bed is turned down; a newspaper lays on the other.

"You can even see the cigarettes in the ashtray," said Andre Parks, a 16-year-old junior from Henninger High School in Syracuse. "I never knew he smoked."

"The most interesting aspect of the tour was when we got a chance to observe the room in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was staying in right before he was assassinated on the outside balcony of the hotel room.

He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel right in Memphis. Being in the same place in which Dr. King was murdered brought chills to my spine. This experience forced me to appreciate and value how lucky I am to have Dr. King as a part of history." - Tiffonia Bufford, 17, junior, Jamesville-DeWitt

Nicole Austin, a junior at Fayetteville-Manlius High School, had waded through part of the first act of Othello on the plane between Detroit and Memphis.

A friend told her she'd like it, so she's been reading for the last few days, a couple of pages at a time. She has no idea what the plot is; she only knows it's supposed to be good.

She doesn't know that the moor Othello loses his Venetian wife, Desdemona, because his skin is too dark.

But the 16-year-old does know that a nuclear power company is paying for a good part of her way down south, and she's conflicted by it. "My only worry is that Entergy is our major sponsor," she said before leaving Syracuse. "A nuclear company?"

Entergy Nuclear is based in Jackson, Miss., and they bought the James A. FitzPatrick nuclear power plant in Oswego County last year. Sen. Nancy Larraine Hoffmann, who organizes the trip each year, secured $10,000 from the company.

Austin, a junior at Fayetteville-Manlius, spent much of the last few months helping her friends prepare for protests against globalization and free trade at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. She wanted to go on this week's civil rights tour because she wants to learn how so many people mobilized and changed laws and traditions.

"That's kinda what I'm trying to do now on a much smaller scale," Austin said. "I just really admire their ability to get a movement started."

Austin is a vegetarian preparing to be a vegan - no dairy, honey, eggs or any other animal products - when she goes to college next year.

"I want to go to NYU," Abdulla Alnouri, a junior at Corcoran, said on the plane just before it landed in Jackson.

"Me, too," Austin added from across the aisle. She listed her reasons, endorsing it as a "good school" and admitting New York City is a huge attraction. "I mean, I don't want to go to school in Nowhere's-ville, Alabama."

The group moved into a dorm at Tougaloo College Sunday night, one of Jackson's historically black schools. Forty years ago, a group of Tougaloo students - five men and four women - led the first sit-in movement in Jackson. They had wanted to use the all-white Jackson Municipal Library. Police in steel helmets took them to jail.

Sunday, the Central New York teens finally began to relax and laugh in the dorm's lobby.

They roared as they watched "Jackass," the MTV show that asks inane tasks of amazingly willing participants. They waited for pizza to arrive, and conspired against a candy machine that took money from a couple of kids.

After the pizza, they turned in their first journal entries.

"Well, here I am again, in the south. It really was not what I expected. The students here on the trip have been great, too. There is such a great diversity among us.

What I think I like the most so far is the stop at Memphis. It made me realize how much I had forgotten what a really real southern accent sounds like. It's weird. I hated it when I lived in Virginia, but it sounded really nice this time." - Abdulla Alnouri, 17, junior, Corcoran