Hundreds of Howard University students, in a well-executed plan, walked out of classes on Friday, Jan. 30, exercising their First Amendment right – freedom of speech – during a march to the White House.
The students carried with them a list of concerns and the demand that the federal government and its affiliates put an end to the strategies and inhumane tactics currently followed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
Once again, African American youth are stepping up to the plate, moving beyond the classroom to the streets in peaceful fashion, and showing that this land is their land, too. As some of the students who organized a recent march in the District said, young people are not only concerned about the future – a future where they will become the recognized voices of authority. But, for a myriad of reasons, they’re also troubled about the present.
The nation and beyond should keep an eye out for the three Howard University students, Mahoro Amani, Zahir Kalam Id-Din and Kaha Bain, who, in protest to what is happening with ICE in Minneapolis and across the country, conceived, crafted and executed a walkout, rally on the steps of Sankofa Video, Books and Café, and march to the White House— all accomplished without any incidents. None of the three have reached their 21st birthdays, but the world can anticipate great things from them and their peers.
In the meantime, as historians note, they follow in the footsteps of ancestors, who, in their youth, answered the clarion call of the trumpet and embarked on similar quests for equal rights, justice, and for the dismantling of Jim Crow and its many iterations.
The late Rep. John Lewis was 20 years old when he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Council (SNCC) in April 1960. He then went on to lead sit-ins in Nashville and was severely beaten on “Bloody Sunday” during the march to Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965.
James Earl Chaney, a civil rights activist, was 21 years old when he was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in Neshoba County, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964. He had been working with two white Northerners, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), while working to register Black voters.
In a more recent event, Jerome Deangelo Richardson, a 21-year-old Temple University student, activist, and executive director of Minnesota Teen Activists, was arrested by federal agents regarding an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church. He now faces charges of civil rights conspiracy and violating the FACE Act.
These young men and women are not living just because. They, instead, have chosen to live for a cause.
