The West Point Civil Rights Staff Ride
Civil Rights Staff Ride Cadets and Faculty Meet Legendary Civil Rights Attorney Fred Gray in Tuskegee, Alabama
Teaching Diversity, Commemorating Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
The West Point Civil Rights Staff Ride was focused on the events of 50-years ago which shaped the
nation and moved us closer to true equality. This intensive AIAD program combined interdisciplinary
study in the classroom with a two-week staff ride through the Deep South to understand diversity and
immerse cadets in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement of the post-WWII era. Cadets were
competitively chosen and went through a rigorous week of classes in the law, politics and history of the
Movement. All rising Yearlings, Cadets Lance Baggett, Michelle Golonka, Jazzmyn Miller, Adam
Reynolds, Nathan Townsend, and Leah Tonetti were well versed in those subjects by the date of
departure for the trip south.
The Staff Ride was sponsored by the West Point Center for the Rule of Law and the Department of Law,
as well as the Departments of History, Social Sciences, English & Philosophy, and Behavioral Science &
Leadership. Truly interdisciplinary, the participating faculty included period literature, music and
culinary appreciation to supplement cadets’ recognition of the importance of diversity.
Escorting cadets on this exciting journey were Maj. Andrew Forney from History, Dr. Rachel Yon from
SOSH, and Dr. Robert J. Goldstein from the Department of Law who led the Staff Ride. Each day of the
journey was filled with encounters with storied veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, their children
and grandchildren.
In Richmond, VA they were met at the State Capitol by Judge John Charles Thomas, the first AfricanAmerican on the VA State Supreme Court, and federal Judge Roger Gregory of the 4th Circuit Court of
Appeals. The judges led a lively discussion which prepared cadets for their meetings, and posed
questions that would resonate as the group travelled to the Deep South. Judge Gregory raised the issue
of whether it might be useful in the current day to focus on the “equal” part of the mandate of
“separate but equal” in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson.
On the grounds of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond Cadets Miller, Baggett, and Tonetti, Townsend,
Golonka, and Reynolds pose with the Hon. John Charles Thomas (left), and the Hon. Roger Gregory (right).
In Farmville, VA they visited the Robert Russa Moton High School, where student Barbara Johns made
history leading her classmates on a boycott of their clearly inferior segregated school. There cadets
spoke with Ms. Johns’ high school classmate Rev. Samuel Williams who participated in the walk-out.
The Reverend had been there as the students met with the attorneys who would take their case
ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court, to be decided as the Brown v. Board of Education case. Cadets
learned that the late Barbara Johns was the niece of civil rights activist Rev. Vernon Johns, preacher at
Montgomery, Alabama’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Barbara Johns’ activism was no mere
happenstance.
In Atlanta, GA cadets were guests at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) founded by
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and visited his childhood home. There they learned that his favorite game as
a child was Monopoly. Not so surprising to our cadets who had learned back at West Point that when
the rules of Monopoly are unfair, or if you join the game in the middle, your chances of winning are
virtually nil.
North of Atlanta, in Stone Mountain, GA cadets were invited to the home of Hank Thomas for what was,
perhaps, the most inspirational story they heard. At age 19 Mr. Thomas, an African-American, was the
youngest Freedom Rider on a bus that was firebombed after leaving Anniston, Alabama. He survived to
tell the tale, to serve his country in Vietnam (Ia Drang – but that’s another story), and become … a selfmade millionaire. Back in Atlanta cadets met the Hon. Mike Bowers, USMA ’63, the former Georgia
Attorney General who talked with them
about civil rights law then, and now.
The Staff Ride’s first stop in Alabama
was in Anniston. That city, where “the
Jim Crow era was worse than slavery,”
has long-suffered with the welldeserved national reputation it earned
from the KKK-led bus bombing. They
welcomed the cadets with open arms.
Mayor Vaughn Stewart himself gave us
a guided tour of the bus station; which
is currently being renovated into a
museum. Pete Conroy of Jacksonville
State University took cadets to the
future site of Freedom Riders Park,
where Hank Thomas’ bus was
firebombed and he lay injured as local
hospitals refused its victims medical
care. Mr. Conroy had invited the Staff
Riders to a barbecue dinner which was
held at the decommissioned Fort
McClellan with Movement veterans and
were treated to an impromptu concert
Front page news in the Anniston Star which reported on Cadets
with Anniston Mayor Vaughn Stewart at the site of the City’s bus
station. It was here that Freedom Riders were first attacked by an
angry mob. Nails were driven into the tires and the bus was
battered causing it to break-down just outside the city limits.
by renowned opera singer K.B.
Solomon.
Programs such as this, set up by our
gracious hosts, elevated the level of
discourse of this Staff Ride.
Cadets then visited Birmingham, Alabama, nicknamed Bombingham for the violence that occurred
there, and were struck by a visit to the 16th Street Baptist Church where a bomb had taken the lives of
four innocent young girls in 1963.
Cadet appreciation for Southern cooking was honed during the trip south. BBQ and chicken & waffles in
Atlanta, traditional southern buffet in B’ham, they enjoyed the local specialties at each meal, trying
many dishes for the first time and all the while holding mealtime discussions of the places and people
they met.
In Oxford, MS we sat down with civil rights historian and Ole Miss professor Dr. Charles Eagles, most
recently author of The Price of Defiance, about James Meredith and the (forced) integration of the
University of Mississippi. His was one view that cadets would hear of the integration of Ole Miss, the
storied “Battle of Oxford.” The second version was from Mr. Julian Gilner, an African-American Ole Miss
grad, who saw the changes in Oxford, and the prospects for the future, from a very different
perspective.
Oxford also features Rowan Oak, the home of Nobel laureate William Faulkner. He wrote: "[t]he past is
never dead. It's not even past." A thought that was very relevant to cadets struggling with the question
of whether the civil rights movement has ended.
The Staff Ride led
through back
roads in the area
surrounding
Philadelphia, MS
where 50 years
before, during
what was termed
Freedom
Summer, civil
rights workers
James Earl
Chaney, Andrew
Goodman and
Michael
Schwerner were
ambushed, then
murdered by
A memorial to the three slain civil rights workers at the Mt. Zion Church. They are not
buried here in part due to the fact that under Jim Crow laws, blacks and whites were not
allowed to be buried together.
members of the
Ku Klux Klan.
Cadets visited the
Mt. Zion Church
as the three did on June 21, 1964, the day they disappeared, after arriving to investigate the torching of
the Church, and cadets then retraced the route to the site where they were brutally executed.
In Jackson, MS, under the leadership
of our friend and teacher Sara
Williams, Staff Riders were invited to
the inaugural Medgar Evers Lecture at
the old state capitol, now a museum.
There cadets heard from civil rights
legend Dr. Robert Parris Moses who
focused on the need for a
constitutional amendment creating a
right to education. It was there cadets
were able to speak with other storied
veterans of the Movement. Cadet
Golonka was able to tell Dr. Moses
that it was he who inspired her to
Cadet Golonka meets with Dr. Robert Parrish Moses, the legendary come on the Staff Ride. Major Forney
civil rights leader who was a founder of the Student Nonviolent
was able to speak with Myrlie Evers,
Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
the widow of Medgar and sponsor of
the lecture, about her slain husband’s
service in the Army. And cadets were able to meet white civil rights leader Rev. Ed King, who along with
Dr. Moses, is portrayed in the current Broadway play All the Way about the three crises facing President
Johnson (played by Bryan Cranston) in 1964.
Cadets were able to sit down with their second U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Rhesa Barksdale, USMA ’66
who spoke of current day civil rights issues and the then-ongoing primary election for U.S. Senator in
Mississippi. The judge also reminisced about his role
as manager of the Army Football team that beat Roger
Staubach’s Navy team in 1964. Go Army Beat Navy!
From Jackson, the Staff Ride headed further south to
New Orleans, LA where cadets were hosted at the
Ashé Cultural Arts Center for a lecture on Plessy v.
Ferguson by Keith Weldon Medley author of a book
about the case entitled We as Freemen. Mr. Homer
Plessy, a New Orleans native was not an accidental
rider on the “whites only” car of the train he boarded;
he was part of a well-organized plan to get judicial
review of Jim Crow laws.
Major Forney speaks with Myrlie Evers, widow of
Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers
who was shot to death in the driveway of their
Jackson, MS home in front of her and their
children. Mrs. Evers is a legendary leader of the
Civil Rights Movement in her own right.
After touring the Lower Ninth Ward devastated during
hurricane Katrina, cadets enjoyed Southern cooking Creole style at the famous Dookie Chase, meeting
92-year old Mrs. Leah Chase, the “Queen of Creole Cuisine” herself, and dining at her historic restaurant
where civil rights leaders met and strategized over their next moves during the 1960’s.
Mrs. Leah Chase told cadets stories of her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She joked with them
about how President Obama incurred her wrath by adding hot sauce to her chowder before tasting it.
The following day cadets were invited to visit Uniontown, AL. Uniontown in Perry County is in the heart
of the Black Belt, the region named after its rich black topsoil, but which is also overwhelmingly AfricanAmerican. Although it figured in civil rights history, the Staff Ride was invited to Uniontown to witness a
modern day civil rights struggle. Cadets were invited by attorney Mitch Reid, USMA ’98, program
director for the Alabama Rivers Alliance, to see sites that contained hazardous wastes. Specifically, they
were there to see coal ash. And they did. This was coal ash that had spilled into a river in Tennessee
and was transported to this impoverished community for permanent disposal. This was an issue
involving environmental justice.
That evening, cadets were invited to a community meeting and potluck dinner by the Black Belt Citizens
Fighting for Health and Justice. It seems that Uniontown, because of its poverty and lack of political
influence or economic clout has been a dumping ground for the toxic by-product of coal-fired power
plants. What cadets witnessed that evening was a genuine civil rights meeting trying to solve a real civil
rights problem in 2014. They were no longer looking back at history, they were in it. The whole
experience connected the cadets to the
community and answered questions posed
earlier during the Staff Ride about the need
for an ongoing civil rights movement.
Cadets spent the night in nearby Selma
(which will be a focal point of next year’s
staff Ride as it commemorates Bloody
Sunday in 1965 and that year’s Voting Rights
Act), and the next morning retraced the
route of the 1965 March from Selma to
Montgomery. In Alabama’s capital, cadets
visited the Southern Poverty Law Center and
viewed the memorial to slain civil rights
workers.
Staff Ride cadets and faculty took a field trip led by Adam
Johnstone (in the red cap) of the Alabama Rivers Alliance
with Mrs. Esther Calhoun, President of the Black Belt Citizens
group and her young son (in the foreground), to view the
mountain of coal ash in Uniontown.
The Staff Ride’s last major stop was in
Tuskegee, AL. Cadets stayed at the Tuskegee
University founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, where Dr. Robert R. Moton, as president of the
Institute created a V.A. Hospital, and where George Washington Carver taught botany and agriculture.
There cadets met with attorney Fred Gray, who represented Rosa Parks, Dr. King, and the victims of the
Tuskegee Syphilis experiments. In Tuskegee, cadets visited Moton Field where the Tuskegee Airmen
trained, fought valiantly in World War II, yet returned home to the land of Jim Crow to play a critical role
in the Civil Rights Movement.
Cadets observed a modern day civil rights meeting in Uniontown,
Alabama after introducing themselves and being welcomed by
members of the community and enjoying a potluck dinner.
The long trip home and the balance of
the summer gave cadets the
perspective on what they had
experienced. To them it was “eye
opening” and a “unique opportunity
to meet and interview veterans of the
Civil Rights Movement whose
educated opinions help to shape my
growing perspective on civil rights
today, public education, and
poverty.” Or as Cadet Townsend put
it, “To be able to meet with important
veterans of the movement made this
more than just a sightseeing trip, but
a life changing experience. “