Day 7: Abilene

0 Commentsby   |  05.21.11  |  Announcements

And so we turned toward home today, leaving Jackson for Abilene.

In Dallas we dropped off the Pope Fellows and Dr. Dillman who will be studying in the Metroplex this week. Before breaking up our group we gathered in a circle, held hands, and sang “We Shall Overcome.” After a prayer the rest of us got back on the bus and headed for Abilene.

We arrived in Abilene safely. After hugs all around I got in the car and started the drive home.

It was an odd sensation. For seven days I had been immersed–heart, soul and mind–in a single decade, the ten years from 1955 to 1965. From Rosa Parks to the Selma to Montgomery March. And now, suddenly, I was back in Abilene in the year 2011.

In the quietness of the car I thought back over the week with my mind lingering over the faces of the twenty-two students who came with Jennifer, David and I. How to sum up our experience together? My mind drifted back to the passage I read in Selma commemorating the Voting Rights March:

Joshua 4:21-22
And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’

What do these stones mean? That’s what we tried to do. Pass on the history, as best we could, to the next generation. To Brandon, Rebecca, MaryLynn, Alvina, Cha’ronn, Kimberly, Mary, Jeremy, Kevin, Michael, Chase, Hart, Jared, Tony, Jennifer, Dylan, Christina, Rebecca, Thomas, Lauren, Brittany, and Theron–the ACU Freedom Riders.

ACU Freedom Riders with Bernard Lafayette--Original Freedom Rider

ACU Freedom Riders with James Zwerg--Original Freedom Rider

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