It has been five days since the Independence Day parade. By now, the kids have made it through an 11 hour driving day and several days of family visits interspersed between introductions to The Middle Passage, Gullah culture, plantation life, the difference between genocide and slavery, and abolition as the first civil rights movement for African-Americans.  I had jumped head first into the stash of children’s books and films, although my saving grace was surely the compilation of songs especially produced for children. One particular CD called, Steal Away: Songs of the Underground Railroad took us thousands of miles on the power of just a handful of spirituals. It felt like we had been away for a month.

On the way down, we had stopped at the home of their paternal grandparents, Al Palmer and Joyce East-Palmer, in Maryland, partially as a weigh station, partially to pick up my sister who would join us for the first leg to Hilton Head for the reunion, and partially to give the kids a chance to talk directly to elders who had lived through and participated in the Civil Rights Movement.  From rural North Carolina and Baltimore, respectively, my mother-in-law and father-in-law met and fell in love at Morgan State in the 1960s and traveled to D.C. with a faculty mentor in 1963 to hear King speak at the March on Washington.  Their presence in the audience is memorialized in Eyes on the Prize in a scene just seconds before the famous “I have a dream” clip that has become so embedded in the American psyche.  Back on that first night of Freedom Summer, before the candle and the musings over George Washington, we had viewed the episode with the kids, waiting patiently to see “Grandmother and Gramps” make it on to the screen. The kids brought hand-held tape recorders and self-designed questionnaires for their grandparents (with only a little help from me, I swear) that included questions like, “What was it like to live during segregation?” “What other freedom fighters did you know of other than Dr. King?” “Why did you go to the March on Washington?” and “Did you like to play when you were a kid?”

So, by the time we get to Hilton Head, I’m sure the kids feel like we have been on the road for a year.  In between reunion activities and waiting for Jen to join us from the West Coast, we set out on a tour of Ft. Howell and the former freedman’s community of Mitchellville provided by the Coastal Discovery Museum on Hilton Head. The sites are walking distance from my family’s new property, and I remark on how I had been visiting that island for over 25 years and had never known about them.  We learn about the major phases of colonialism, the movement toward industrial capitalism to the use of the island as a military outpost in WWI and then its development into a resort town in the 1950s, but not at all in these terms, even though the children’s books on Gullah culture we had packed for the ride would describe these later macro changes for young readers as “a kind of new slavery.”  We would not get that kind of interpretation at this museum and I certainly was not surprised.   My head begins to spin nonetheless. A kind of vertigo set in as I try to manage the total disconnect between the reality of contemporary life on Hilton Head and the historical narratives presented before us. I would come to understand this as one of the hallmark psychic experiences of our trip.

Later in the tour, we learn that there are slave quarters ruins just a mile or so away from the museum, but the tour does not take us there despite the fact that it is on public property.  The kids and I venture on to find the ruins ourselves, and we locate them behind the dugout of what is now a baseball field.  Fenced off, a marker memorializes the plantation owner as much as the fact that these were once the homes of people who lived as slaves.  We leave the local museum to get some rest before our ride to pick up Jen in the morning, and I see a framed collage on the lobby wall that includes images of Dr. King and the cut out words, “They fear each other because they don’t know each other.” I sigh to myself.  I hear this all the time from my students as they try to explain the persistence of racism- that is, if they acknowledge its persistence.  They are, of course, correct on some level about the impact of segregation, but they come with such a small part of the story.  Now we are leaving with it.

As we wait out the day until Jen arrives, I take a few minutes to talk to Kell about the difference between genocide and slavery as he pronounces again, as has become somewhat of a routine, that “white people killed all the black people.” I realize he is beginning to morph the particular manifestations of racism against Native Americans and African-Americans. I know he is wrestling with the core idea of genocide, and I am troubled to hear such things come out of his mouth.  At the same time, I want him to know these things before their realities blindside him.  Have I started too early? Does he even understand what he is saying?

The next day, on the way to pick up Jen, a dear Auntie and walking library of social movement theory and politics, we sing spirituals over and over again.  We have been singing them from the day we left our house, and I can’t imagine how the trip would be unfolding now if we didn’t have this music with us each day.  The kids are belting out “Wade in the Water,” and I think of the magical moment just days before when they were first really learning the song. Just as we were crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge, singing “God’s gonna trouble the water,” the sun bursts out after two hours of blinding rain on the New Jersey Turnpike, and the voiceover on this kids’ version of the spiritual tells about one of Harriet Tubman’s dangerous crossings of the same river years ago.

Now, as we approach the airport with the volume high, I look in the rearview mirror and see that Kellum is visibly upset.  He is not whining or having a tantrum, but crying silently, and I ask him what is wrong, at the same time remembering the advice of a close colleague’s mother who would warn her children to never ask a question to which they didn’t really want to hear the answer. “I’m sad because I am thinking about my ancestors,” he says.  I freeze up and wonder again if I am blowing it completely.  God’s gonna trouble the water.  Sophie provides a quick tickle and I know, as parents do, that in moments like this it can go either way: back to the manageable surface or even deeper into despair.  He cheers up and turns his attention toward the runways stretching out before us.   Meanwhile, the debating voices of educational psychologists are raging in my mind, louder than the sound of the incoming planes.

Jen strides out of the gate to see the three of us in our red Freedom Summer T-shirts, hardly able to contain ourselves.  We had brought a shirt for her, of course, and the kids nearly plow her over to give it to her along with big hugs and kisses.  They desperately want to show her the inside of the decorated van, and so we head quickly to baggage claim as we also have a scheduled Black History Tour of Savannah waiting ahead that afternoon.  The day is heady, but our energy is high.

Later that night, after scrapbooks and journal entries, Sophie asks, to my surprise, if we can play “Black History School,” and we have our first circle-time with Jen.  I ask them to tell the “new student” what we have been learning about these past few days.  Nobody says anything for a very, very long time.  I think about the social science research that found that teachers allow students only three seconds, on average, to answer questions, and I try to resist the urge to prompt them. They look at me, shyly, and back at Jen.  And then Kellum says, “Freedom.”  I breathe out a sigh of relief. Okay, the basic idea is in there somewhere.  And then his one word becomes the door to paragraphs from Sophie who informs her Auntie of the grueling labor of slavery, the origin of the Underground Railroad, and tales of amazing escapes.

Knowing we were leaving for a tour of the King Center in the morning, Jen and I try to segue to the concept of segregation and I try to help them get a better handle on the meaning of segregation by telling them to think first of separation.  Kellum recognizes right away that this word is associated somehow with Dr. King, and Sophie, remembering the presentations on the Savannah lunch counter protests and wade-ins at a nearby Georgia beach, offers the reminder that separate was not equal.  Kellum is taking it all in, adding his own details of what he found interesting.  We end with a reminder of what slavery was again, and this time, as I brace myself for his 4-year old rendering, Kell gets it exactly right and tells Jen clearly that slavery was about forcing people to work against their will, and, by the way, did we know that the Underground Railroad wasn’t really underground?  Bravo, I think.  I’m flying high when Sophie says softly, “I wish slavery was a dream.”

Before we fall off to sleep, I try to talk about the failure of the state to fully help black people be free after slavery was abolished, but I can’t quite translate it well enough for them to grasp it.   I leave if for the road to the King Center.  The next morning we are buckled into our minivan seats on the way to Atlanta.  We have three hours to move the kids from their understanding of slavery and abolition through Reconstruction to Jim Crow, and to begin the process of explaining how slavery and segregation were similar but different systems of inequality.  But most centrally, we want them to hear that segregation generated a historic movement of resistance that inspired social change around the world.  It occurs to me that this is probably more time than most undergraduates in the United States are given to make sense of these very same ideas, so I pop Our Friend Martin, an animated introduction to the life of Dr. King, into the portable DVD player and drive out of the driveway feeling mighty emboldened as we head for Georgia.