Saturday, June 2, 2001

By Teri Weaver

- Jackson, Miss.

Ryan Putman's first experience with live music was Thursday night at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson, Miss.

No punk rock or heavy metal fell on the ears of the Stockbridge teen-ager: this was gospel, with rap, reggae and R&B overtones, sung by African-American artists in an African-American church.

Seven gospel acts performed. The choir clapped and shook their risers. Grandmothers in the audience danced, holding dazed babies. In the midst of the performances, the church took up a collection for scholarship money. And the pastor of the church, the Rev. Jeffrey Stallworth, constantly raised his hands upward, daring the people, "Let's have some church."

"It was awesome," Putman said after he spent the better part of three hours on his feet, clapping along. "I loved it. It wasn't what I expected, lots of enthusiasm. We should do that before track meets."

Putman's classmate and neighbor, Adrienne Wilson, agreed. "When the choir started singing, it gave me chills."

But Andre Parks, a junior at Henninger High School, chastised the group. "Ya'll weren't dancing enough," he said, still sweaty from the heat and rhythms from inside the church.

Putman, 17, lives on East Hill in Stockbridge in the same house his father grew up in. Stockbridge-Valley High School, where Ryan is a junior, includes grades seven through 12 and has 281 students. School records show one black student in that group, but Putman says that kid moved away a few months ago.

This week Putman is in Mississippi learning about the civil rights movement with 15 other high school students from Central New York. Thursday morning, the group was in Natchez, a Mississippi river town, to tour the main house and slave quarters of an antebellum home. In the afternoon, they made their way back to Jackson, the state's capital.

Thursday night's concert was the first of several events the kids will participate in to honor Medgar Evers, the former leader of the state's NAACP who was gunned down in his driveway 38 years ago.

"I didn't understand why another black person would want to stop the movement to get them the rights they were being deprived of. When I thought about it, I started thinking how far-fetched it must've seemed. They probably didn't see ... how these people organizing these rallies and pickets could change the world." - Kiara Sligh, 16, junior, Rome Free Academy, writing in her journal.

Charles Evers and Myrlie Evers-Williams pulled up to the church Thursday night in a white Lincoln towncar. A group of four African-American Jackson police officers on motorcycles led the way. Mayor Harvey Johnson, Jackson's first black mayor, followed five minutes later with another police escort.

Charles Evers has organized a homecoming celebration for his brother for the past few years. Charles was mayor of Fayette, Miss. - a crossroads in the southwestern part of the state that some of the teens visited this week - for 16 years. At 78, he is now chair of the board of supervisors in his home county, Jefferson.

He lives in a house in Fayette built like a bunker. It looks like a one-story brick storefront, about the width of three city-style shops. There is only one window among the thousands of white bricks. The shot that killed his brother in his Jackson driveway in 1963 went through the front window, into the kitchen and pierced a piece of watermelon. Charles took over the state's NAACP; Medgar was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Medgar Evers' wife, Myrlie, moved her family west months after the shooting, and she makes rare appearances in Mississippi. She sat with Charles during the concert; their guest, Dionne Warwick, sat between them.

"Sometimes we ask why things happen to us we don't understand," Myrlie Evers told the crowd Thursday night. "Medgar said a few days before he died, 'I would gladly die if it becomes necessary to make things better for my people.' I hope it never happens again. "

"I really appreciate and respect Charla (Harlow) as a person. I don't know her very well, but I see how strong she is, physically and emotionally. When we were at Medgar Evers house, she asked if there was anything that she could do to help with the civil rights movement. No one else had asked that question. Everybody else was following on the achievements of other people, and she was concerned with what she could do for others." - Meghan Stringer, 17, junior, Fayetteville-Manlius High School, writing in her journal.

When Charla Harlow got the news, she put her face in her hands. Steven Lickstein's heart starting racing as he was told. The two teens from Central New York were going to make a presentation to Charles Evers in Anderson United Methodist Church in front of about 400 people already an hour into a good time.

They practiced their speech over and over, then had to wait about 20 minutes before being called up on stage. Finally, state Sen. Nancy Larraine Hoffmann, who volunteered in Mississippi during the early '70s and worked on some of Charles Evers' campaigns, invited "the mayor" to the stage. Harlow and Lickstein took the mic and sailed through flawlessly, giving Evers an Oneida-brand platter.

"We'd like to thank all the people of Mississippi for their love and hospitality," Harlow said, and the crowd clapped in return.

Once offstage, the high school juniors, Lickstein from Jamesville-DeWitt and Harlow of Henninger High School, hugged. After the concert, strangers came up to them with hugs. "Ya'll did so good," one woman said. "We're so glad to have you."