Courage of civil rights workers to be lauded at NEA meeting here
Charles Prickett remembers being in Mississippi during the 1964 Freedom Summer, risking his safety to help black people register to vote.
Several times a week, people shot at their house or threw firebombs, making Prickett feel as if he were being targeted by terrorists in his own country.
On Wednesday evening, Prickett and a dozen other people and groups will be recognized for their work in human and civil rights at a gathering of the National Education Association in Houston.
Some, such as Prickett, participated in historic moments in the fight for racial equality. Also being recognized is Baxter Leach, who participated in the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, demanding improved safety and higher wages. It was what drew Martin Luther King Jr. to the city, where he was assassinated.
Others, such as activist Eddy Zheng, who has called attention to youth imprisonment, continue to work in new ways to end discrimination.
“There are still people that are attacking people of color, or anyone who’s different than they are,” said Prickett, 75.
Nearly 7,000 members are expected to attend the annual convention of teachers, school admin
istrators and other school staff.
The union, which bills the event as “The World’s Largest Democratic Deliberative Assembly,” will meet Thursday through Sunday at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
On Friday, the group will also host a presidential candidates forum that will include former Vice President Joe Biden, former San Antonio Mayor and HUD Secretary Julian Castro and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
Prickett, who became a lawyer and who continues to speak to students about his experiences, said he sees the same issues arise today as those he fought over in the 1960s.
As a young activist, he participated in the March on Washington in 1963, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. And Prickett later took part in the Selma to Montgomery March, during which nonviolent protesters including current U.S. Rep. John Lewis were brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers after crossing the Edmund Pettis Bridge.
Today, Prickett said, voter identification laws suppress turnout by certain minority groups, segregated neighborhoods make for segregated schools, and immigrants are viewed by some as less than human. He sees people still subjected to violent responses, as he was.
The awards date back to the same year that Prickett spent the summer being shot at in Mississippi, when schools began desegregating after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and black teachers were losing their jobs, NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia said.
The NEA merged in 1966 with the American Teachers Union, which had represented black teachers in the then-segregated South and had traditionally held an awards dinner to honor leaders in the justice and civil rights movement.
The teachers all shared a commitment to fight discrimination and ensure schools felt safe, Garcia said. The NEA continues to hold the awards program, as a way to honor, raise awareness of history and inspire.
This year’s awards come at a time when the country feels more divided than ever, making their work all the more important, Garcia said.
“We have not arrived yet,” Garcia said. “You can’t take it for granted that everyone’s rights are going to be respected.”
‘There is hope’
Among the winners are educators working to help immigrants, Native Americans and women.
Zheng, 50, a Chinese immigrant who started a foundation called New Breath, said he sees a relative lack of urgency in fighting for civil rights today.
But he was excited to see people from so many different backgrounds fighting together.
The key, in his mind, is understanding the social and political context in which events occur, a learning process he calls a “personal revolution” that he said he went through while in prison.
Zheng now runs a program in a California prison that focuses on teaching Asian-American and Pacific Islander prisoners about their culture and history.
The education, he says, allows for healing and collective change.
“We have to be able to understand where we came from, how we got here, where we’re going,” Zheng said. “Where’s my connection in humanity if I don’t understand my history, if I don’t understand my culture?”
Zheng said he remains optimistic. He is encouraged by how powerful people can be when they are activated and clear about what is important.
“As long as we’re breathing,” he said, “there is hope.”