While the voices are still with us
By Kevin Enos Brown
JA Guest Writer
The generation that once risked everything to bend this nation toward justice is now aging into its twilight years. These were the young people of the civil rights movement; ordinary citizens who organized, strategized, prayed, marched, and endured so that future generations could live with greater dignity. Today, they are elders. And while their voices are still with us, we face a defining question: are we listening closely enough to apply their wisdom to the challenges of our own time?
This writer was recently reminded of this urgency after meeting a Freedom Rider whose courage compelled her to act as a teenager. She was barely old enough to vote, yet brave enough to challenge segregation head-on.
Today, she is 85 years old; clear-eyed, reflective, and still carrying memories that no textbook could fully capture. Her story is not something young people need protection from; it is something they need access to. It is living proof of what youth can do when trusted with truth and responsibility.
The Black History Gallery in McComb, Mississippi, is answering this moment with intention. Beginning in January 2026, the Gallery will host a yearlong oral history initiative, Living Legacies, inviting community members – especially elders – to share their stories in their own words. The project reflects a powerful belief: history does not only belong to institutions; it belongs to the people who lived it. We are all curators of memory, and the time to preserve it is now.
Youth organizations, schools, and arts spaces play a critical role in this work; not by sheltering young people from difficult history, but by empowering them to engage it thoughtfully. The civil rights movement was led by students not much older than those sitting in classrooms today. To present that history as too heavy or too complex for youth is to misunderstand it entirely. The movement itself is evidence that young people rise to the level of trust placed in them.
Yet, the responsibility cannot rest solely on institutions. The deeper imperative is on everyday people – parents, neighbors, congregants, mentors – to pass this legacy on outside the walls. In kitchens and community centers, at reunions and youth meetings, in churches and barbershops, history must be spoken aloud. If we wait for permission or perfect platforms, the moment will pass.
The movement’s concepts remain urgently relevant. Its emphasis on collective responsibility offers guidance for today’s challenges around crime, housing, and community wellness. Civil rights leaders understood that public safety grows from strong relationships, shared accountability, and investment in people. They knew that housing stability undergirds opportunity, and that organized communities can confront injustice more effectively than isolated individuals.
At the heart of that organizing stood the Black church. During the movement, churches were more than places of worship; they were nerve centers for leadership development, mutual aid, and moral clarity. Today, the Black church still holds the capacity to convene, connect, and heal, serving as a bridge between generations and community institutions.
This writer’s philosophy, articulated in Outside the Walls: Reclaiming History with Community Spaces, grows out of personal experience. My mother’s wisdom and commitment to passing down genealogical knowledge taught me that memory must be actively carried forward. That inheritance now guides the mission of the Black History Gallery: to ensure that elders’ knowledge is not lost to time but shared as instruction for the present.
The saying remains painfully true: when an elder dies, a library burns. The Living Legacies project is an effort to save those libraries – not by locking them away, but by opening them to the community.
While the voices are still with us, we must listen. And more than that, we must repeat what we hear; across generations, beyond institutions, and outside the walls – so that history remains a living guide, not a silent relic.
The Black History Gallery is located at 819 Wall Street, McComb, MS, open Monday–Friday, 12–4 PM, with $5 admission. To learn more about the Living Legacies oral history project, email bhgpike@gmail.com or call 701-500-4813.
History is still speaking. What we do with it is up to us.
