About 30 12th-grade students from the Washington, D.C., area visited Greenwood on Monday to hear a lecture from state Sen. David Jordan.
Jordan said he had been receiving a group of students from D.C. every year since the late 1970s after forming a relationship with the U.S. Department of Justice in 1965. Jordan coordinated with attorney Nate Rosenberg to get blacks in Greenwood registered to vote.
Shortly after, the Justice Department began sending students to Greenwood every year to learn about the city’s role in the civil rights movement, Jordan said.
This year’s students were participants in Operation Understanding, a program designed to enlighten students on the depth of discrimination. The program is particularly geared toward African-American and Jewish struggles.
Jordan told the young crowd about what life had been like for him growing up in Mississippi decades ago. He told the students that if he could go “from the cotton field to the state Senate,” then they could do anything they put their minds to.
Jordan also told the students that he had sworn when he was young never to leave the state, because he wanted to see that change would come.
One student, Tomas Samson, said he felt like being a part of the program gave him a voice. “Here, you learn way beyond what you’d learn in school,” he said.
Another participant, Carol Silber, said what she loved about being in the program is “the idea of understanding.” Through the program, she’s learned to try to get to the bottom of where a discriminatory belief comes from, she said.
The students also traveled to cities in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
• Contact Chloe Ricks at 581-7124 or cricks@gwcommonwealth.com.
