Visiting civil rights history

South Carolina State University student Henry Smith probably didn't know he was a leader. He just knew he was outraged when police beat two women on campus. In a protest against police brutality and segregation in 1968, police opened fire to control the angry crowd and killed Smith and two other students. He was 19. The defendants were acquitted.\nSmith's story is told on one of 40 plaques of activists killed during the civil rights movement. His tribute is located in the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Ala. This weekend, more than 40 IU students made the 10-hour bus ride to Montgomery to see where many events of civil rights history happened. The trip, which the CommUNITY Educators program sponsored, allowed students to come together to visit historical sites such as the Rosa Parks Museum and Civil Rights Memorial, and tour and attend a service at the church where Martin Luther King Jr. served as a pastor.\nOur first stop of the trip, the Rosa Parks Museum, was located at the site where Parks refused to give up her bus seat Dec. 1, 1955. Her courageous act sparked the Montgomery bus boycott that eventually let to the desegregation of buses in Alabama.\nWe toured the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, located one block from the Alabama Statehouse. In the church basement, Montgomery citizens first gathered to plan the bus boycott. Martin Luther King Jr. served as the pastor there from 1954 to 1960. He was only 25 when he began. We saw the pulpit where King delivered sermons that moved thousands. As our group sat in the congregation Sunday, we listened to the current pastor speak on leadership. He told us the leaders of the civil rights movement were ordinary people doing extraordinary things.\nWith the CUE program's overall theme this year being "The Power of ONE," we asked ourselves "what would I have done back then?" It's easy to say we'd all stand up and fight for justice, but it's impossible for us to know what we'd truly do to stop hateful adversity. The guide at the Rosa Parks Museum said King received up to 30 death threats per day during the time he was vocal against social injustice. His home was bombed, but fortunately no one was injured. King continued his fight, despite having everything to lose.\nThe struggle for civil rights is far from over. Racial tension and inequality still exist nationwide. The Southern Poverty Law Center is located across the street from the Civil Rights Memorial, and its employees fight against discrimination and hate groups. The law center receives frequent bomb threats from groups that don't want the center to continue fighting hate. Guards monitor the grounds, and one told our bus driver to relocate when we parked adjacent to the building.\nMoreover, the docent at the Civil Rights Museum said the number of white and black residents in Montgomery is about the same, but more than 97 percent of public school children are black, while the majority of white students attend private schools. This separation and exclusion hardly seems equal.\nIn honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day this week, let's reflect on his legacy, but also the legacy of the ordinary people who fought and, in some cases, died for what they believed. Henry Smith was just an average college student like most of us who wanted himself and his peers to be treated with dignity. We cannot forget his sacrifices and the sacrifices of all of those working for civil rights. We have the responsibility to remember their struggles and continue their work until King's vision becomes a reality.