Schools

History Comes to Life for Howell High Students

Civil rights icon talks about his experiences with Martin Luther King Jr.

In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day students at and around the country enjoyed a three day weekend. On their first day back, students at the local school got the chance to see firsthand what made the civil rights leader the icon he was by talking to someone who had fought alongside him on the front lines. 

Don Olivaria, a Brooklyn native recounted for the students when at 14-years-old he went with his parents on the momentous walk from Selma to Montgomery in March of 1965. As the students at two assemblies watched videos of what happened on that day Olivaria told them what it was actually like. 

Olivaria said the experience was unlike anything he had grown up with or experienced up to that point. Living in Brooklyn where he said he lived with people of all races and not being old enough to vote himself, he said he went because he believed it was the right thing to do. 

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He said after the assembly that the people in his life also guided him in that direction. "By going to the various churches that I went to with my parents I would hear the ministers and the preachers talk about our brothers and sisters in the south," he said. "It began to hit me when I heard that the teachers were some of the major leaders and I began to ask my teachers and they really gave us the education that they didn't teach us from the front of the classroom because they weren't allowed to."

Making the 51 mile march, Olivaria said he may not have known what to expect but he knew was expected of him. "The plan was to march. The plan was to protest. But the plan was to be peaceful," he said. "One thing Martin told us was no matter what happens do not, absolutely do not raise your hand back to anybody who raised their hand to you."

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Being part of a peaceful protest was not something Olivaria said he was used to. "I'm from Brooklyn. You want to hit me, guess what, I'm going to hit you back." He was able to fight that instinct to be part of what has been a historic event. "All I knew was I was going to fight. That was my whole purpose of going. I was going to show the whole civil rights movement how to turn things around." 

Even once he got to the south, Olivaria said he was surprised by the reaction from not only the people he was protesting against but also people he was marching with. "When we got to the south it was different. The people were different. The people were afraid," he said. "They told us often when you leave, we're here and we're going to die."

At just 14-years-old he saw people die including a friend who had made the trip from New York who did not go home alive. The videos from that day have been shown many times over the years, but Olivaria said there are things the cameras missed that the people marching had to deal with.

Not only were there members of law enforcement there to greet them, but also local residents who were also against their mission. He said behind the officers were farmers with axe handles and bats wrapped with barbed wire. The fact that the protesters kept marching only made their opponents angrier. "They would not believe that we would defy them in such a way," he said. 

Looking back Olivaria said the memories of that day are as fresh as the day it happened. Seeing how much they accomplished makes it a special day that started a process that he said continues to this day. "What it means is that we made progress," he said. "We made more progress than we anticipated."

He started his talk by showing the student clips from the Occupy Wall Street movement. "What I tried to show was how a movement begins and hopefully you have an ending that will be positive from the movement itself," he said. 

Stan Koba, the school's Social Studies Supervisor, said Olivaria brings an important lesson to the student on many levels. "In this age of social media so many of the kids build their lives around the internet and around computers," he said. "Even with Occupy Wall Street and what happened in the Middle East, these revolutions were fueled by social media. The civil rights movement was fueled by human beings."

As time goes on the number of people who were part of the movement dwindles making people like Olivaria an important part of the student's education. "As long as we have the opportunity to bring somebody like him in who can exemplify leadership, understanding, compassion and strength we're going to keep on doing it," he said 

The auditorium will host more speakers in February as part of Black History Month. They include a Special Investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen and a dance artist.


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