When Hendricks Chapel hosted the gun violence panel Tuesday night, Dean Tiffany Steinwert noticed it dealt with many of the same issues civil rights leaders were fighting 50 years before, under leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

“It’s absolutely right that the civil rights movement of yesterday and today comes through Hendricks Chapel,” Steinwert said. “It is, at our core, who we are.”

Hendricks was created as an interfaith center in 1930. The term “interfaith” meant a union between Judaism, Christianity and Protestantism, Steinwert said, which was still enormously progressive at the time. Its mission as a place for safe interfaith practice became historically synonymous as a place designated with upholding social justice.

The concept for Hendricks’ placement came from Chancellor Charles Flint. Flint wanted Hendricks to be at the geographical center of campus, serving as a metaphor for the moral center of Syracuse University. It was at Hendricks where many civil rights leaders chose to speak during the 1960s. It was on the steps of Hendricks where the students arrested in the civil rights sit-ins spoke out about the injustice of their arrests.

The influence from past activism, including the civil rights movement, is something Steinwert believes is a large part of modern movements.

These movements, as Steinwert said, are things that change in time.

“We learn, and are inspired, and gather hope from the struggles of the past,” Steinwert said. “When students are gathering around whatever issue it might be today, they are looking to the past not just for strategy, or ‘How did they do it?,’ but for a sense of inspiration and hope.”

She pointed out that college students ultimately created the civil rights movement, and that it was a young demographic that started the momentum of civil rights activism.

Steinwert reflected on a South African proverb she felt served as a powerful metaphor for the values of activism. The proverb tells the story of a woman trying to cross a river who is given guidance by a character named Woman Wisdom. Woman Wisdom points out the way locusts cross a river. Many locusts attempt to cross the river but perish. Eventually, their bodies create a bridge for the rest of the locusts to cross.

“All of us have a role to play in taking the path to the water, or having our bodies be the bridge upon which others will cross,” Steinwert said. “That’s what social movements are all about.”

The prevalence of college students in the civil rights movement of the 1960s was something not lost on Derek Ford, either.

Ford is a graduate student in the cultural education program. He is also a member of the activist group Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. Ford, along with the rest of ANSWER, has been involved with the Occupy Syracuse movement, and has held multiple educational and anti-war forums to increase the dialogue about those issues in the Syracuse area.

Ford said the civil rights movement was distinct because it was the first movement in which there was enough of a college population for that age demographic to make a significant difference.

Providing education about the history of these types of movements is something Ford and ANSWER take seriously.

“To recognize the past that we inherit is important,” Ford said. “The history of student activism, specifically student activism in the United States, and the way that, that is framed is crucial.”

He acknowledged the discrepancies in the history of the civil rights movement — the fact that it is always portrayed as a peaceful movement, when there was a lot of violence involved— but he said he feels the past is still very much a part of activism today.

Activism is something that has been a part of the city of Syracuse for years, and has not slowed down since the civil rights movement. The issues in the 1960s were centered largely on issues of housing, along with issues of sports segregation on the campus itself.

These organized movements have continued throughout the years, said Dennis Connors, historian at the Onondaga Historical Society. The Native American population in Syracuse started a movement dedicated to protecting Onondaga Lake and conserving the natural resources around the area that boomed in the 1980s. More recently, there has been a lot of activism surrounding the refugee movement on the north side of Syracuse.

And Connors, like Steinwert and Ford, said he finds the progression of these movements has inevitable roots in the past. It goes back even further, Connors said, pointing out that Mahatma Gandhi influenced Martin Luther King Jr.

He pointed out adjustments have been made to activism, including the increase of social media as a forum for social change. But much of the sentiment remains intact.

Said Connors: “Tactics are different, but the goals, I think, of getting your voice heard, I think still relate.”

Published on February 21, 2013 at 12:37 am

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