The 50th Anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer happened just in time. For months now, I've been stewing about the cascade of people who have lost their way. (They know who they are.) Watching Stanley Nelson's American Experience documentary of that summer 50 years ago, when a thousand college kids streamed into Mississippi to run Freedom Schools, register the unregistered to vote, and stand up a new version of the Mississippi Democratic Party (the Mississippi FREEDOM Democratic Party) crystallized the thought. Fifty years ago, student volunteers knew what it meant to offer up your life to help push our people forward. Some gave their lives, others broke with their families, all were accountable to the vision they shared: Mississippi had to change. America had to change.
Back then, their purpose was to shine a light on the backwater of
American racism. Today, too many "leaders" thrive in the backwater and
the shadows, using this country's neglect as a shield to pursue personal
gain.
Mississippi Freedom Summer brings back the question of what it means to take risks for change. I'm always fascinated by those who believe that risk-taking for change is easy; that they "never would have stayed in slavery," or "never would have let somebody keep me from voting," or even "never would have joined the Nazis." What this amounts to is a failure of imagination: an inability to identify with the vulnerability, the fear, and the courage required to take risks for change.
Risk-taking for change is fraught with uncertainty. You cannot know what enemies you will create. You can never know whether you will succeed or not, whether your contribution is important or enough, or even when your number is being called. You cannot know how or if history will judge you. You cannot even know whether the change you seek is the crucial one. You could win. Or you could lose everything. You just don't know.
This is why being ready to take risks for change is so important. It means keeping your spirit ready. It means a daily sharpening of your principles and sense of accountability. It means knowing what change is worth to you, and keeping in sight the people you want to benefit from the change you seek.
All of this is why there are not many people who are risk takers for change. Even the Civil Rights Movement, as massive as it seems, involved relatively few people.
A lot has changed since that summer 50 years ago. Barriers and challenges to African American development have now appeared in many places we're not used to seeing. To the ranks of the Bull Conners, George Wallaces, and Frank Rizzos have been added a new swath of both opportunists and the lost--those who have lost sight of principle, accountability, and social purpose. They don't know where they're going, so any road will take them there.
Which is why I want to give a shout out to Maisha Ongoza and her fellow Board members at Imhotep Charter School. As board members of a relatively small charter school in a small Philadelphia neighborhood, it would be easy for them to turn away from their findings of nepotism, test-taking fraud, financial improprieties, and other shortcomings of Imhotep's operation. Only by focusing on the welfare of the students at Imhotep, and what they deserve, would make the risks they took worth taking.
The ranks of the lost are growing. We need more risk-takers for change to pull them back onto the path toward progress.
