Content Warning: Please be advised that this article contains a brief mention of sexual violence.
On Thursday the 12th of February, a special opportunity came to Evansville that enlightened grade school and high school students. Hezekiah Watkins, a civil rights activist, travelled from his home in Mississippi to speak to students in Evansville because of the University of Evansville’s Journey to Justice program led by Dr. Valerie Stein. This program gives high school students the ability to travel to places such as Birmingham, Selma, Jackson, and other important locations from the civil rights movement. A year ago, students from Bosse Highschool met Hezekiah Watkins in Jackson, where he promised that we would return to Evansville a year later to meet them.
He kept his word and arrived in Evansville on the 12th to greet the students and speak to the broader Evansville community. The public was allowed to enter Bosse to have an opportunity to hear his story, a chance that is dwindling as time goes on. That evening, he spoke about the terrors of Jim Crow and specifically how he was arrested when he was thirteen. He was arrested because he said he was born in Wisconsin. Since he was not from the Jackson area, he was suspected of being a Freedom Rider, along with Rosa Parks and other activists at the time. He was immediately arrested under suspicion, which led to him being tortured and mistreated in the facility. Mr. Watkins stated that “those thirteen days in there felt like thirteen years.”
After finally being released, he felt the need to stop anyone else from having the possibility to endure what he had felt. Shortly after release, against his mother’s wishes, he joined the Freedom Riders and participated in walkouts at his school. Such walkouts led to all of the students who participated being arrested and sent to a fairground in garbage trucks, both filled and empty. Mr. Watkins stated that the officers abused and raped the girls at the fairground until white girls from other schools stepped in. After telling his stories to the crowd that night, Mr. Watkins connected those events to what is going on with ICE in our society today. ICE arrests people with the same “reasonable suspicion” tactics that led to Mr. Watkins being arrested as a thirteen-year-old boy in Jackson, Mississippi.
Acknowledging his arrival as a call-to-action, the local high schools in Evansville planned an afternoon walkout after Mr. Watkins left Bosse’s post-lunch assembly on Friday. Masses of students marched up and down Main Street, even passing by the hotel Mr. Watkins was staying at. After seeing the event occur, he told Dr. Stein that he wishes to return to Evansville again.
The schools, prior to the event, made extensive announcements condemning the event in an attempt to discourage students from going. This did little to stop the students from leaving some institutions. However, other schools took more drastic measures. According to Dr. Stein, North Highschool along Highway 41 had armed police at the entrances of the school to prevent students from leaving the building. This action seems in violation of the First Amendment, as they are blocking the famous right to demonstrate that is granted by our founding fathers.
An Indiana state law states that school walkouts are not considered a First Amendment right because they interfere with school attendance, which is mandated by law. The Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Supreme Court case ruled that schools can only limit protests if they cause a substantial disruption and/or impede the rights of others. In my opinion, based on this ruling, the school is actively preventing the students from expressing their First Amendment rights from a federal standpoint, which overrides state law.
Other students from Central Highschool claimed that the school had locked its doors to prevent students from leaving, which is a blatant violation of ethical school safety laws. The doors are never meant to be locked from the inside because that would in effect trap students with a potential gun or fire hazard. These students were able to make it to Helpful Hippie’s weekly antifa pro-democracy protest at the Federal Building because they escaped the school before officials were able to lock side-doors used for maintenance. Assuming that what these students told me was true, the schools need to be called out and held accountable for violating the children’s safety and right to free speech.
After protesting with the students at the Federal Building, I decided to speak to locals about the event. They had a mixed view about the students, with some stating that they “bring me hope” and others saying, “they don’t even know what they are protesting for.” Despite receiving some criticism from the public and crackdowns from the school administrations, the students stood firmly for what they believe. These youth are quite active and do not approve of the Trump Administration’s limits of our inalienable rights, and the schools’ obvious pushback against their student bodies only emphasizes the limiting of those rights. To conclude with how the youth involved in the event felt, here is what a member of the student panel from the Bosse Assembly said to Dr. Stein: “Thanks for letting me do something like this. I’m proud of all my friends as well. This is one of the best things I have done all 4 years of high school. I’m beyond grateful for this, and meeting Mr. Watkins was one of the best things ever.”