Friday, June 1, 2001

By Teri Weaver

Natchez, Miss.

The Rev. Percy Turner began singing "We Shall Overcome." He was sitting under a pecan tree Wednesday afternoon on his farm in Fayette, Miss. His goats were bleating, and logging trucks full of uncut wood thundered by on Highway 28 in front of his home.

Sixteen-year-old Ryan Oot barely mouthed the words to the civil rights anthem. But the Kirkville teen leaned in while Turner, a Baptist preacher for 2,000 people at seven Baptist churches in Fayette and nearby Natchez, talked about the civil rights movement in his hometown.

And when Oot met up later that night with the other high school students from Central New York who are in Mississippi this week, he hardly put his dinner on the table before talking about his day with Turner.

"Everyone should have had the chance to meet Rev. Turner," Oot said.

Turner smiles and laughs after he finishes each train of thought, showing the gap of teeth on the bottom left side of his mouth. He's slight and fit, wearing a straw cowboy hat, blue jeans, work boots and a "Civil Rights Connection" T-shirt the kids gave him. He wears a cellular phone on his waistband.

He told the kids about meeting in a cornfield at night to talk about the movement. The NAACP would give families $25 a week to buy groceries.

Once, the Ku Klux Klan had a meeting in a field across from his homestead, where he has built three houses.

"It seems scary, because I don't even like to leave my door unlocked," said Tiffonia Bufford, a 17-year-old from DeWitt.

"The longer the cause went on," Turner told her, "the braver they got."

Oot wasn't the only one eager to talk about his day. He's one of 16 teens who boarded a plane Sunday to meet people in Mississippi who worked in the civil rights movement. That first day, the kids sat together shyly at the airport, many sticking with their friends from the same high schools, or with those of the same skin color.

After supper Wednesday, 13 of them - black, white, tan; rural, suburban, city - crowded at one table in the gym of the First Presbyterian Church in Natchez to talk out the day and catch up after splitting up the previous afternoon.

"You get to know people," said Dennis Price, 16, a junior at Henninger High School. "And the more you have in common, the more you want to hang."

"At first you went with people you felt comfortable with," said Meghan Stringer, a junior at Fayetteville-Manlius High School. "Now, we know each other."

Stringer grew up in Manlius with five brothers and sisters. She has spent most of her summers at camp, first at play and now as a counselor. This summer, she's giving up a weeklong family vacation in China to go back to the woods. She was astounded Wednesday night to know that Shanetkwa Little, a junior at Fowler High School, has lived most of her life in Syracuse and never skied.

Stringer spent the first two days on the trip reading Stephen King, even while sitting with the other 15 blaring away. Wednesday, the hardback was nowhere in sight.

The 16 teens had split up Wednesday to do community service projects. Nancy Larraine Hoffmann, the Fabius state senator who organizes the trip each year, insists the kids volunteer to get a glimpse of what it means to give up time and sweat for someone else.

Oot and three other teens checked fences on Turner's farm to make sure none of his cattle could escape. Another group worked with abused kids at the Natchez Children's Home. Some cleaned up at a soup kitchen in Natchez. And the last group put a fresh coat of paint on a stage in downtown Port Gibson.

After painting, they went to lunch at The Depot, a restaurant managed by Amelda Arnold, the town's first female, and first black, mayor. She took their orders, helped serve their food and finally sat down herself to eat some greens and fried chicken wings.

Around the room, workmen of all colors sat at tables together. The city attorney and an assistant prosecutor, both black, got the buffet. The New York teens learned that night they had been sitting in what once had been the coloreds' waiting room of the Port Gibson train station.

The day before, Arnold had played host to a tour group from France. The area draws people from all over. Nearby Natchez has its antebellum house tours, historic bed-and-breakfasts and views of the Mississippi River. Highway 61 runs near there, and draws a line northward through Fayette and Port Gibson, and into the Delta and its blues.

After lunch, the teens went back to Port Gibson's City Hall, a home that had once housed a women's college. "That bathroom is bigger than our dorm room," said Ryan Putman, a junior at Stockbridge Valley.

Eight of the teens are staying at Alcorn State University, the state's traditionally black school for agricultural studies. On Tuesday night, some of the college and high school students stayed up, talking about their hometowns and listening to music. The Southern friendliness made up for the roaches and lack of shower curtains the boys discovered in the bathrooms.

"All the kids have been so nice to us," said Andre Parks, a junior at Henninger. "They all say 'hi' to us. Not like in New York."

The night ended at First Presbyterian, a church attended by whites, in the center of downtown Natchez. It has two buildings, a half basketball court, an industrial-size kitchen and a pipe organ in the sanctuary.

Marguerite Johnson, who helped organize a boycott of white businesses in Port Gibson in the late 1960s, spoke to the group. She was born in 1915, and she speaks with a soft, Southern, raspy voice. The kids didn't jostle, so that they could hear her in the wooden, echoing room.

Steven Lickstein, a junior at Jamesville-DeWitt, asked her what people could do to further the civil rights movement today.

"Look at this young group tonight," she said, lifting her arm and waving it in front of her. "It looks like we're doing it now. We're getting together, we're talking. We're getting to know each other."