Correspondent photo / Sean Barron John Liana, the Youngstown Museum of Industry & Labor’s curator, conducts a tour of the facility Friday for those who are part of a Freedom School project that Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past is conducting for students in grades four to eight. The event ends Saturday with a walking tour to see historic sites in Salem.

YOUNGSTOWN — Jaron Chambers is thrilled to see his three young daughters learn about the civil rights movement — including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s six principles of nonviolence — though he also realizes the power of setting such an example on a personal level.

“It starts at home, and I hope they see that they can gain that in our household,” Chambers, of Girard, said Friday.

The philosophy of nonviolence is practiced and reinforced at home for his daughters, Amerie, 6; Aliyah, 9, and Avery, 14. That is a sound path for the girls to not only know and appreciate their history, but to exercise the courage to stand up for what’s right and make a difference in other people’s lives, Chambers added.

Also acting as a major reinforce for that aspiration is the three siblings’ participation in a six-day Freedom School project that the Mahoning Valley Sojourn to the Past organization is running, mostly at the Tyler History Center, 325 W. Federal St., downtown.

The project began Monday and wraps up Saturday with a walking tour of historic sites in Salem.

In addition to instilling in the students the ability to develop greater reading, writing, critical-thinking and research skills and learn more about black history, the project is geared toward demonstrating for them the importance of standing for social justice and nonviolently fighting against injustices, Penny Wells, Sojourn to the Past’s executive director, has said.

On Friday, the groups of students displayed and discussed collages they crafted that capture significant people and events of the movement in the 1950s and 1960s. They included the May 1963 Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, and the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, along with Diane Nash, a key figure in the movement; the tragic story of Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered Aug. 28, 1955, in Money, Mississippi; and the nine black students who, in September 1957, integrated the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and were known as the “Little Rock Nine.”

Also happy to have assisted in instilling such knowledge in the students was Tasia Wayne, an East High School junior who embarked on a one-week Sojourn to the Past journey in April to key civil rights sites in the South.

“I told them, ‘It’s not always going to be adults who make a change in the world. Kids can do it too,'” Wayne said, adding, “The kids are respectful, ready to learn and fun to be around.”

She also shared with them the Children’s Crusade in which thousands of young people — many of whom were barely older than the students — received training in nonviolence techniques in the 16th Street Baptist Church before being arrested for marching without a permit. Their aim was to integrate the downtown businesses and break the back of segregation in a city that many historians considered the most segregated in the country.

By most accounts, more than 4,000 of them were taken to jail over several days and, when the cells were filled, others were transported to the Jefferson County Fairgrounds and housed in hog pens that served as makeshift jails. Nevertheless, their efforts succeeded in integrating much of the city and leading to the resignation of Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s racist public safety director.

Wayne, who plans to attend The Ohio State University and become an orthodontist, said she also mentored some of the students on writing poetry and creating artwork.

Also Friday, the students and adults walked from the Tyler History Center to the Youngstown Museum of Industry & Labor on nearby West Wood Street, where they were to have heard a presentation from local historian Vincent Shivers about the black perspective regarding the history of steelmaking in the Mahoning Valley. Shivers, however, was unable to attend because of health concerns.

Instead, John Liana, the museum’s curator, led them on a guided tour of the facility while explaining part of the area’s long association with steel and its deeply-woven roots in local culture.

Many steelworkers came from Slovakia, Croatia and elsewhere, and they were among the people Adolph Hitler sought to subjugate and make into second-class citizens, he said. Their toil and unrelenting work contributed greatly to the war effort, Liana noted.

He also explained the intricate, detailed and often dangerous process of making steel, saying that limestone, coal, coke and iron ore were the key elements needed before the material went through a blast furnace, a Bessemer converter or an electric furnace. The results often were teeming ingots that were stripped and sent through a soaking pit then a rolling mill before being made into billets, slabs or “blooms,” which were large, semi-finished products with square or rectangular cross sections ranging from 8 to 24 inches.

Liana told the students that safety in the mills improved as unions became better organized.

He also mentioned major union strikes in 1919 and 1937, the first of which began Sept. 22, 1919, and was an effort by the American Federation of Labor to organize U.S. Steel. Nevertheless, violence broke out when two strikers were killed and 23 others were injured.

The May 1937 work disruption, known as the “Little Steel strike,” saw violence, particularly at Republic Steel plants, between workers and law enforcement, including the National Guard. Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the strike was on June 19, 1937, a day infamously known as the “Women’s Day Massacre” in which two people were killed and 23 others injured.

Despite several work stoppages over the years, the steel industry continued to thrive in the Valley until Sept. 19, 1977, a day known locally as “Black Monday,” Liana said. The Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. abruptly closed its Campbell Works, idling an estimated 5,000 workers.

The overriding reasons for the demise of the local industry as a whole were the failure to spend the money to modernize equipment, and greed on the part of owners and unions, Liana explained.

After the tour, the students and adults engaged in reading aloud short narratives of those who exercised courage and stood up for social justice – often at great risk to themselves. Those they honored included Minnijean Brown Trickey and Elizabeth Eckford, two of the nine students who integrated Central High; LeBron James, who spoke against the 2020 killing of George Floyd; the folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary; Vernon F. Dahmer of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who fought for voting rights; John Lewis, a civil rights icon and Georgia congressman;Tupac Shakur, a famous rapper who also wrote poetry advocating for social justice; and the Rev. Lonnie K.A. Simon, a longtime social justice and civil rights activist from Youngstown. Also honored were several Sojourn to the Past students for their activism.

In addition, Derrick McDowell, who runs the Youngstown Flea and is running as an independent candidate in the Nov. 4 election for Youngstown mayor, spoke to the group about what motivated him to enter the race.

McDowell recalled having been upset with what he saw as unfairness in Saturday morning cartoons he watched as a child that allowed certain characters to always emerge as victorious at others’ expense. That planted a seed in him to adopt many of the strategies used in the civil rights movement to stand against injustices, including those in which doors are opened for some people and closed for others, he explained.

“I didn’t know a muscle was being exercised in me,” McDowell said, referring to his reaction to the cartoons.

He urged his young audience to “exercise your muscles to stand up ” for what is right while accepting the baton from those before them who also did so.