Reflections on the Fall Break Service Trip

When I heard that our fall break service trip would be in Mississippi, I was excited and anxious about the experience. I expected going into the trip that the issue of racism would be brought up and somewhat prevalent, but I didn’t know to what extent. The first night that we were there, our site host told us that at night, the gazebo area in the center of the town was “Whites Only.” To say that hearing that caught me off guard would be an understatement. Growing up, I learned about the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement and the extreme hardships that people went through due to their race. However, maybe it was due to my own naivety, but I thought that those types of outright segregation ended years ago. I never expected to hear about “Whites Only” places or a neighborhood that had a “members only” pool. The week that we spent going around the city and speaking with members of the community opened my eyes to the still present issues of racism in our country.

During our trip, we were able to meet people in the community who had first-hand experience of direct and indirect racism, yet they all seemed to have some of the most optimistic outlooks on life that I have ever encountered. One woman spoke to us about her experiences growing up in Calhoun City. I would’ve understood if she had hard feelings towards those who mistreated her. However, she had no ill feelings towards them or her experiences. Rather, she was able to find the positives in her experiences and not let what she had experienced hinder her from doing what she knows she is capable of achieving. I greatly admired her and her outlook on her past experiences and on life and others in general. One thing that she said that stuck out to me was that she didn’t see how she could dislike someone who may mistreat her or who was of a different ethnicity than her because she saw everyone as being a part of the same human family. “The same blood that runs in me runs in you.” She was just one of the many people that we met during our trip who were working towards breaking down the racial barriers that is still present in their community. 

I feel incredibly blessed to have had the opportunity to go to Mississippi and meet and interact with such inspiring people. I believe as a group, we grew closer together through our experiences at the elementary school and at the Excel Center, but especially in our discussions about what we heard and what we observed during our time there. The times that we spent with the kids at the elementary school and at the Excel Center will be some of my fondest memories of the trip. It’s difficult knowing, though, that we were only able to do so much for the kids in the amount of time that we were there. There is always this desire within myself to see a tangible change towards improvement in the lives of those that I help. But I think it’s unrealistic to expect this type of instant change, especially with a short trip such as our own. I would love to think that we made a huge impact on the kids’ lives, but I know realistically we did what we could with the time that we were given, and we did our best to have a positive influence on their lives.

I think the greatest change that happened during this trip, though, wasn’t in the lives of the kids that we met, but in our own lives. We experienced a different way of living that most of us were not familiar with before this trip, and we grew in our understanding and knowledge of the daily struggles that people are living with. It made us empathetic and conscious of the lifestyles of others and made us more appreciative of the opportunities that we are blessed to have.   

- Lorraine Martinez

Learning in Mississippi

Our first day of sitting in on the elementary school was the day after Columbus Day. In the first classroom I helped out in, third grade, they had a worksheet exercise about Christopher Columbus, and they discussed their answers as a class when they were all finished. Among common questions about Christopher Columbus was one that asked if Columbus treated the native people of the New World nicely. Every single student answered "yes," and when the teacher was going over the answers for the class, she didn't correct them. Christopher Columbus, while the discoverer of the New World, has become a controversial character in American history because he was known to have mistreated and enslaved Native Americans in the early days of New World expansion. So my question is this: did the teacher simply not know, or purposefully avoid the topic so closely related to civil rights issues of the 60s? 

Our focus in this service trip was to be immersed in the issues of race and the Mississippi education system. Mississippi received failing grades from national reports on their education system. We also met an employee of the Excel tutoring center who is a senior in high school forced to go to Community College before moving on to a larger 4-year university because she feels as though her school hasn't prepared her for a university. Segregation may not be legal, but race still seems to be a huge issue in their community, and civil rights units aren't mandated for history classes. Segregation still exists under the cover of private institutions like a private school and a "members only" swimming pool. One of the Excel center board members is a white woman married to a black man, and she said that she is fully accepted in neither black or white communities because mixed relationships are not a thing in Calhoun. 

We spent our first two days in Calhoun, Mississippi touring a sweet potato farm, cotton farm, Oxford (home of Ole Miss) and some local establishments. This seemed to be meant to prepare us by giving us an idea of the system that our hosts were trying to break. We got a glimpse of the farming and manufacturing business, the future of some of the Calhoun Elementary students, but also a glimpse of Ole Miss, a place that the students at Calhoun talked about with starry eyes. 

Our week in Mississippi proved to be extremely educational and rewarding. We bonded a lot as a group, but each and every one of us also made a really special connection with the kids we were working with. While it was tough to stand back and know that tutoring for 3 days won't really make a huge impact in the lives of those kids, it was humbling to have learned so much about their community, and to realize how lucky we are to have the ability to go to such an incredible university. 

-Maria Watson