Fourteen members of the Diocese of Southern Ohio are on an intergenerational Civil Rights Pilgrimage traveling to Atlanta, Selma, Montgomery, and Chattanooga from May 31 to June 7. The group has met with Dr. Catherine Meeks of the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing, and visited The King Center, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Legacy Museum and the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.
After visiting the Legacy Museum and the Civil Rights Memorial for Peace and Justice, the group gathered to reflect on their experience. “I shared how much I appreciated the use of art to create layers of storytelling, and wept as I expressed my gratitude to those who made such an enormous financial investment to tell a story we have resisted talking about for centuries,” said the Rev. Mary Laymon of St. Simon of Cyrene in Lincoln Heights, who is writing daily updates for her parish, writes. “Others shared their grief that they never learned this history, and our schools do not teach it, and their children and grandchildren have been denied access to it. We wondered together how we can bring what we are learning back with us, and what role we, the church, can play, to be truth-tellers, when our civic institutions fail us.”
Read the full text of Laymon’s daily updates below:
