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If there was one thing that organizers of the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Burglund High School walkout want people to take from the event,
it’s a sense of inspiration and enlightenment.
Lisa Brown Deer, adult liaison for the Young People’s Project of McComb said, “If anything comes out of this
we want people to know it is the love and inspiration that this event has brought our young people.”
Deer said students of the YPP have been working to collect oral histories, and through these interviews they
made a special connection with the people involved in the walkout. “They looked at them as teenagers, even
though they were older and had gray hair,” Deer said. “They didn’t see that. They saw them as teenagers their
age that did something very brave and they felt an instant connection with them.”
The event was organized by the Young People’s Project of McComb, the Black History Gallery and local civil rights elders.
Among those on hand were members of what activist veteran Brenda Travis said was the McComb Five, one of the early
springforms for the civil rights movement in Mississippi.
The days events happened at Higgins Middle School, formerly Burgland High School, and included oral histories,
Burgland Walkout discussion panels, freedom song workshops, voter registration, seminars on education, youth
organization and civil rights, a children’s story circle and bus tours of historical sites.
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