Jackson Free Press

Tamaya Daniels sat in the lobby of the new girl's dorm at Tougaloo College, watching the Lakers vs. Pistons game on television. A center for Nottingham High School in Syracuse. N.Y., she was routing for the Pistons because they were the underdog. Six feet tall, Daniels had to stand in the few higher portions of the ceiling in the basement of Slave Haven. She could not stand up straight in the room where thousands of slaves had waited to be taken through the Underground Railroad.

Molly Lutton, 15, plays tennis and is interested in studying evolutionary biology back at her private high school in Syracuse. Here in Mississippi, she shucked corn and washed a car for the Natchez Children's home where she spent two days and nights.

Sharia Graham sat beside Lutton as she declared that she loves to sing, particularly R&B and gospel. She talked rhythmically about her host family in Natchez, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Mr. Jones, 85, is a war hero, with a bachelor's degree, and Mrs. Jones was the first black elected official in Natchez. Mrs. Jones introduced Graham to the novel, "Black Boy," the autobiography of black Jacksonian Richard Wright, which made a profound impact on her perception of the Civil Rights Movement.

As New York state Sen. Nancy Lorraine Hoffmann and I talked, Daniels, Lutton and Graham mingled with their peers, students from rural, suburban and urban areas, from public and private schools, all 25 students laughing and smiling without hesitation or thought of racial barriers.

This diverse and select group of students from Hoffmann's district in central New York, flew into Memphis, Tenn., Sunday, June 6, to experience the Civil Rights Movement in a hands-on manner through visiting actual sites, such as Medgar Evers' home (and now museum), Burkle Estate Museum and the Melrose Plantation, and by meeting extraordinary people who are not in any of the summaries in their history books.

Their week-long tour in the South is called the Civil Rights Connection. The project was started in 1996 by Hoffmann and Charles Evers, brother of Medgar Evers. Hoffmann worked with Evers and others involved in the movement for two years beginning in 1970. This experience allowed her, then a young woman straight out of Syracuse College, to associate her very real experiences with the pages of a textbook or the mindset of someone detached from the South and/or the cause. This year, the teens went to Port Gibson, Natchez and Jackson.

Hoffmann said she began the program because she wanted these kids and others like them to know that her friends and co-workers from her time here are "great Americans." She also wanted them to feel a sense of empowerment to accomplish something, change a common mentality and revolutionize their worlds.

Graham said that this week has given her a chance to see how other people act and also to disprove the preconceived notions she had of the South in relation to racism. She has found a lot more liberal and free-thinking people in the South than she anticipated, adding that she believes that it is important to see how people from other parts of our country live and interact with one another. These words poured from a high school basketball player, who didn't even know that Hoffmann was her senator before the program began.