Nonviolence Week to step out Oct. 4 downtown
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YOUNGSTOWN -- The Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past organization is preparing events, activities and gatherings for Ohio Nonviolence Week that gets underway early next month.
Nonviolence Week, which runs Oct. 4 to 10, will begin with the 16th annual Nonviolence Parade and Rally, set for 3 p.m. Oct. 4 at Wick Avenue and Wood Street, downtown. The parade will travel through the corridor to the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre for a program. Those interested in registering for the parade can do so at www.ohiononviolenceweek.org.
Also part of the activities will be Chalk the Walk for Nonviolence opportunities Oct. 1 to 10 in which businesses, churches and schools are encouraged to have people use chalk to write words and draw pictures in front of their buildings that exemplify messages of nonviolence, kindness and peace.
Also in the mix is a five-day nonviolence reading challenge at noon Oct. 4 to 8 at the YWCA of Youngstown, 25 W. Rayen Ave., downtown, which will conclude with a panel discussion at noon Oct. 9 based on the readings. Lunch will be at 11:30 a.m. Go to www.ohiononviolenceweek.org to sign up.
A Mingle with Minni gathering is set for 5 to 8 p.m. Oct. 5 at Flambeau's Live, 2308 Market St., on the South Side, in which attendees can meet Minnijean Brown Trickey of Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a longtime social justice, environmental and civil rights activist who also was one of nine black students who integrated the all-white Central High School in September 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, collectively known as the Little Rock Nine. Tickets are $25 each and may be purchased at www.ohiononviolenceweek.org or at the door. Those interested can eat in or take out.
Also, the Simeon Booker Award for Courage will be distributed during a program that begins at 7 p.m. Oct. 6 at the Tyler History Center, 325 W. Federal St., downtown. The honor is named after Booker, a civil rights reporter who broke the tragic story about the Aug. 28, 1955, lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Missisippi. He then wrote for Jet magazine and became the Washington Post's first black reporter. The award is given annually to those who go above and beyond to display courage, compassion and greater connections, as well as embody the philosophy of nonviolence.
This year's local recipient is Marc Ellis, a third grade teacher in the Youngstown City School District. The national recipient is attorney and activist Fred Gray of Tuskegee, Alabama.
Ellis has been instrumental in whetting his young students' appetite to learn about the civil rights movement, social justice and tolerance via having them read age-appropriate books on the subjects. In addition, Ellis has brought figures such as Brown Trickey and the late Jo Ann Bland of Selma, Alabama, to his classroom to speak to his students.
Gray, 95, who also served as an Alabama legislator, represented Rosa Park during her famous Dec. 1, 1955, arrest in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s first civil rights lawyer and as a litigator in the 1956 Browder v. Gayle case, which ended racial segregation on Montgomery's buses. He also has represented Claudette Colvin, who, at age 15, was arrested in April 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, eight months before Parks.
In addition, Gray argued Gomillion v. Lightfoot, the 1960 U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned the gerrymandering of black voters in Tuskegee.
Gray, whom President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022, also secured a $10 million settlement for the Tuskegee Syphilis Study survivors.
The reception that will get underway at 5:30 p.m. at the Tyler History Center is $35 per person, but the program is free.
Nonviolence Week also will include a spoken word, "Speak Your Peace," 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 8 at First Presbyterian Church of Youngstown, 201 Wick Ave. This event is free.
A "Freedom First" jazz performance is set for 7 p.m. Oct. 9 at St. John's Episcopal Church, 323 Wick Ave., which also is free.
A conversation pertaining to the philosophy of nonviolence will take place at 1 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Youngstown, 1105 Elm St., on the North Side
"The goal of Nonviolence Week is to make the community stop and think about the need for all of us to work for nonviolence in our community, In the words of Congressman John Lewis, an icon of the Civil Rights Movement and a nonviolence role model for all, 'If not us, then who? If not now, then when?'" Penny Wells, Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past's executive director, said in an email. "Certainly at this time, we need to pause and focus on ways to bring about an end to violence in our city and in our country and in our world."