Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, Rep. John Lewis, who represents Emory’s district in the House of Representatives, and three former student activists who participated in Atlanta’s civil rights movement gathered on Monday in Harland Cinema to discuss the role of today’s students in the struggle for human rights and current local and national civil rights problems. They also discussed their own experiences as young members of the Atlanta movement.

The panel discussion was the kick-off to Emory's Human Rights Week, which will feature events Monday through Friday that will include talks, exhibits and film screenings addressing the rights of minorities, women, prisoners and gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people.

Emory students in Human Rights Action collaborated with other student organizations to produce this year’s events in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Before an audience of more than 40 students, faculty, administrators and other Emory community members, Franklin delivered the keynote address in Monday’s event.

Franklin hailed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ goals of “inherent dignity and equal, unalienable rights” for all people in her speech and brought attention to the fact that the United States has not yet ratified important, American-drafted articles of that document concerning economic, social and cultural rights.

Franklin also noted the abilities of youth leaders to lead in movements due to their special abilities to form unconventional friendships and alliances, their familiarity with technology and their lack of economic constraint in terms of having to keep a certain job.

Above all, youth have “the audacity to believe that things can be different,” she said.

Speaking of the civil rights leaders onstage, Franklin said, “These people ... did the impossible. They believed in nonviolence ... [and that] even the oppressors should be redeemed.”

Franklin closed her speech with some mildly political statements on immigration.

“It is easy to say that some people belong here and others don't,” she said. “If people are in our midst, we should provide them the rights we want for ourselves, our families, our neighbors.”

Benetta Stanley, who works for human rights in Atlanta, acted as moderator for the panel discussion that followed, introducing the panelists: the Rev. Lonnie King, Constance Curry, Charles Black and Lewis, who represents Georgia’s fifth district and almost all of Atlanta.

Many of these leaders have known each other for close to 50 years and had worked together through the Atlanta University Center to picket and desegregate Atlanta establishments.

Stanley first asked the panelists what they thought the role of students today is in the human rights struggle.

King, who had been chairman of the Atlanta student civil rights movement and president for the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, spoke first.

“It had to be the young soldiers who had to face the bullets,” King said about how youth have always had major roles in battles and struggles. He added that there needs to be a balance between wisdom from the old, skepticism and action from the youth.

“We have destroyed talent that could have continued our dominance” as a nation, King admonished. “God didn’t put all the brains in the suburbs; a few brains were put in some ghetto places,” he continued.

Curry, who was an adult adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, spoke on resegregation in today’s public schools and the “pipeline to prison” for black youth. Curry produced a documentary on school resegregation and also wrote an award-winning book Silver Rights about a family’s struggle to send their children to desegregate a public school system.

“We were very caught up in the concept of a ‘beloved community,’” Curry said, applying Martin Luther King’s words to her peers’ experiences in organizing demonstrations.

Black, who succeeded Martin Luther King, Jr. in his position at the forefront of Atlanta’s student movement, spoke on the mounting death toll of the current war in Iraq in terms of lives and resources, pointedly mentioning that in a recent interview, in response to a statement that many Americans wish to end the war, Vice President Dick Cheney responded with “So?”

“There’s a lot to be done, and if you don’t have a cause, just watch the news,” Black concluded.

— Contact Nina Dutton