In this current intense political and racial climate, one Alabama resident has taken it upon himself to educate young people about the importance of tolerance and the history of the civil rights movement.
Charles Woods serves as the outreach coordinator for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute going around to public schools and conducting workshops and talks about the importance of civil rights. He walks through key moments in the civil rights movement so that children can learn from the past in order to never repeat it.
“It’s important for kids today to understand what happened in the past,” Woods told HuffPost. “I try to illustrate that at any age you can recognize what’s right and wrong, and you can stand up against things that are wrong.”
The timing could not be more perfect. Recently, a new study claiming that hate crimes have risen five percent in just two years has coincidentally occurred when President Donald Trump ascended into the White House.
“They live in a climate right now where if they don’t pay attention, history could repeat itself,” Woods said of his young students. “The things going on with Muslims right now are very reminiscent of what happened with black people in the first half of 20th century.”
One of his methods he employs to illustrate the struggle for equality is a game of tug of war.
“I show them that after the four little girls died, with those images going across the country, even folks on the establishment side had a change of heart, so I take more [students] on freedom side,” Woods told the outlet. “Then you pull the rope ― and freedom always wins.”
Through the exercise, he shows that the fight for equality isn't a fight between black and white but oftentimes it is a fight between the establishment and those looking for freedom. But Woods doesn't stop there. He reminds his students that the pursuit of justice is always met with pushback from the establishment. When a student asked if Black Lives Matter was a terrorist group Woods told the student how the pushback worked.
“Whenever you see a black organization standing up for the rights they feel are being infringed upon, you get pushback and resistance,” Woods said he told the student who asked about Black Lives Matter. “When Martin Luther King Jr. first came onto the scene people weren’t behind him the way they are now ― when he was doing campaigns, people across the country thought he was an agitator, a rabble-rouser…"
“History is an always-occurring event ― it’s not just young people, but getting all people to understand we’re living in history right now. So we educate the present, about the past, to enhance the future.”
Keep up the great work Mr. Woods!
