Th3 event: Civil Rights Connection

presentation with Sen. Nancy Lorraine Hoffmann

Sen. Hoffmann and select students will present at ArtRage in conjunction with Breach of Peace, an exhibit of portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders by Eric Etheridge.

AFTER THE FREEDOM RIDERS – a special opportunity to share the experiences of Senator Hoffmann’s Civil Rights Connection program.  Join Senator Nancy Larraine Hoffmann and a panel of Civil Rights Connection scholars with their mentors and parents discussing the lessons learned in their experiences meeting with both well-known and unsung known heroes of the non-violent civil rights movement in Mississippi.

The Civil Rights Connection was conceived in 1996 by former Civil Rights Worker Nancy Larraine Hoffmann at the urging of Charles Evers and BB King. The mission is to provide New York State high school students from diverse backgrounds an opportunity to meet people who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and to learn how the non-violence concept guided their determination to achieve equality. Far more than Senator and other organizers ever anticipated, the CRC scholars over the years have brought home meaningful messages from what they called a life changing experience.

The CRC experience is a mobile seminar in which scholars participate in workshops featuring heroes of the Civil Rights Movement including James Meredith and Charles Evers, experience historic sites such as the Medgar Evers home and historic Black colleges, and maintain journals of their own personal reactions to what they see and hear.  Much as the early Civil Rights workers performed a wide variety of volunteer services to communities of the segregated south, our CRC Scholars perform service projects.  Early projects included such activities as helping to paint a community center or cooking a serving a meal at a local soup kitchen.  More recently the scholars have helped rebuild homes along the Gulf Coast as part of the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Program.   During each CRC trip, the New York State scholars are joined by young people from Mississippi for varying levels of time.