MLK students contemplate personal sacrifice in the Civil Rights Movement on Day 2 of the Immersion Trip
- Samantha Siedow
- Mar 12
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 13
By: Samantha Siedow
March 9, 2025
If University of Minnesota MLK 3000 students weren’t told Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ home was just a block away from where their bus parked, they could have missed it entirely.
They stepped into an ordinary Jackson, Mississippi, neighborhood. A man drove past with a cigarette hanging from his fingers. A dog barked in the distance. Children’s toys were scattered across front lawns.
A normal neighborhood, except for the teal house with a plaque.
The house where a white supremacist shot and killed renowned civil rights activist Medgar Evers in front of his wife and children on June 12, 1963.
As the bus rolled toward the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, Ezra Hyland, a teaching specialist in first year writing at the university, community activist and history buff told students they must recognize the power they hold.
“There’s a great fear people have for you young people, and it’s that you have unlimited power and unlimited potential,” Hyland said. “So, they are going to constantly tell you things about yourself that aren’t true.”
Hyland said students need to mindfully consider the stakes of civic engagement and consider the intentions of people who discourage them from voting.
“Why should you vote? If people are willing to kill to keep you from voting, then that's what you need to do,” Hyland said. “If people will kill to keep you from getting education, that's all you should ever try and get.”
Evan Johnson, the university associate director of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion who leads the class, said students are often struck by the unassuming location.
“That's a big thing for me with visiting the Medgar Evers site each and every time that I feel like folks need to grasp 'cause it's a historic monument, but it's someone's home,” Johnson said. “It's just a home. It's just a home in a neighborhood.”
According to Johnson, the site is not only a landmark but a physical representation of a larger truth. History may be frozen in time, but it remains intertwined with the present.
“Physically seeing this location forces you to sit with — and experience — that discomfort,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the historical fear that has driven white resistance to Black progress is because of internalised guilt.
“If that is a fear that someone has, of retribution, I feel like that is your subconscious talking to you, naming that you're already aware the subjugation you're doing is wrong,” Johnson said.
Building students’ confidence and equipping them with the tools to create change, Johnson said, is central to his role.
“No system is going to give you the full education to overthrow it,” Johnson said.
Dr. Flonzie Brown-Wright on persevering through hardship
Students were equipped with historical context before their visit to Medgar and Myrlie Evers’ home from their previous visit to the Two Mississippi Museums.
The Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson focus on the state’s role in the Civil Rights Movement and the history of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Native American tribes.
After two hours spent exploring the museums, students moved to a conference room, waiting to hear from Dr. Flonzie Brown-Wright, a prominent civil rights voting activist.
When Brown-Wright arrived, waving and smiling to applause, she told students she made a promise to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before a 1966 march to Jackson.
Sitting at his feet in her hometown of Canton, Mississippi, King told a small group of activists he knew his days were numbered. Brown-Wright said she vividly remembers King’s serious expression as he asked them to make a commitment: Stand against segregation and racism and continue his work to make the world a better place as long as they lived.
An assassin killed King in Memphis, Tennessee, two years later.
Brown-Wright has spent every day since living up to that promise.
Brown-Wright, who became the first woman elected to public office after winning a race for election commissioner in 1968, told MLK Program students the biggest challenge she faced in the role was not convincing Black people to vote, but helping them to navigate methods of voter suppression set up to discourage them.
“We just have to keep on believing in what we're doing is right. We have to keep on believing that the sacrifices are worth it and sometimes they can be very laborious, but we have to keep doing them,” Brown-Wright said.
Brown-Wright said her position as election commissioner helped her realize the importance for people to vote and use their voice.
“When people don’t vote, they vote by default,” Brown-Wright said.
Brown-Wright never planned on or wanted to be an activist, but the movement called to her, and when someone hears a call to action, they need to respond, she said.
“I didn't choose this, would not have chosen this, but now in hindsight, 30, 40, 50, 60 years later, I would not have done anything any different,” Brown-Wright said.
Brown-Wright said activists will always run into obstacles because people fear disruption to the status quo.
“Setbacks are going to come because there will always be people who will not want you to reach your full potential, they’re part of the job if you will, because if it was easy, we would not have to have a civil rights law,” Brown-Wright said. “If it was easy, we would not have to have a voting rights law.”
Brown-Wright said even at 82-years-old, her promise to King maintains her motivation to continue attending events and speaking out.
“While I appreciate the invitation from your group, I'm really here because I made a vow,” Brown-Wright said. “That's why I'm here today, coughing and all, because I made a promise that if I had an opportunity to tell the story, iIf I had an opportunity to affect someone's life, I would do it.”
For Hanna Anderla, a 20-year-old second-year sociology of law, criminology and justice major from Minneapolis, the most difficult part of the day was processing all the information.
"It's definitely overwhelming trying to reflect on all the information that I've consumed, and just kind of sitting with that and reflecting on it and feeling it out," Anderla said.
Anderla said she worked to absorb as much as possible, while reminding herself that missing a plaque or an exhibit shouldn’t take away from the importance of simply being present.
Anderla said she has made overlapping connections between her major-related classes and the immersion trip.
“I really think about how this, stories of history, impact today's society,” Anderla said. “And I feel like voting and disenfranchisement in formerly incarcerated individuals and incarcerated individuals has really impacted our political system and our democracy.”
She is already thinking ahead to her post-trip showcase, an event in which immersion class students create projects to reinforce lessons they learned and present to university community and family members. She plans to focus on voting rights for currently and formerly incarcerated individuals.
