One thing young people often do not acknowledge is that institutionalized racism is still alive in this country, Lucenia Williams-Dunn, the first female mayor of Tuskegee, Ala., said.
In honor of Black History Month, Williams-Dunn spoke along with other "children" and "grandchildren" of Alabama Monday night to recount their experiences growing up in the South during the civil rights movement.
Anoa Harris, a specialist in gender studies and international development and a native of Tuskegee, recalled attending civil rights rallies when she was 8 years old and growing up with parents who taught her: "If there is a wrong, it should be righted."
"Blacks were not thought of as people," Katie McCurdy, who was raised in Birmingham, Ala., said. Despite the inequality, she said she remembered learning early on that "white water tasted just as good as black water."
According to Harris, when activist groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were banned across the South, women formed their own groups to support each other.
"Women would not refer to themselves as activists," Harris said. "They were just doing what they had to do."
Williams-Dunn said when she was growing up in the 1950s, one thing blacks always valued was their strong sense of community. It is unfortunate that in the last 20 years, individualism and self-interest have grown in the United States and replaced the sense of community she grew up with, Williams-Dunn said.
Williams-Dunn said, however, that as the war in Iraq escalated and more people realized how many lives are being lost, Americans as a whole have started to come together.
She also attributed community growing from a "blending of generations," pointing out the increase in interracial relationships and friendships.
Harris said the exclusion of any group of people in a society means that we are all less. "We could be a better group of human beings if we were all included," she said.
Harris said race should still continue to be discussed.
"Never close off a discourse on race," she said. "To try to silence the discourse is the most dangerous option that we could take."
Richard Phillips, a freshman in the School of Public Affairs, said he found it interesting that while some children were sheltered from the violence of the civil rights movements, as McCurdy said she was, others like Harris, were raised at a young age to take active part in the movement.
"I really enjoyed the strong emphasis on the importance of family," Phillips said.
Rachel Harlich, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she enjoyed learning about the stress caused by racism.
"Bigotry is systemic in our society," Harlich said. "Racism is still present in so many ways."
The "Life As Activism" forum, sponsored by Women's Initiative, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Roosevelt Institution, was held in Butler Board Room.
