Brenda Travis

At the Mississippi Civil rights Museum today, I read about a group of students who tried to integrate the McComb bus terminals, including one high schooler named Brenda Travis. She and her peers were arrested at the Greyhound bus station and spent 28 days in jail. When they were released, Travis found out that she  had been expelled from school. The next day, half of her classmates (115 people) walked out of school in an event known as the Burglund School Walkout. Travis was sent back to jail without a trial. The other students protested until forced to go back to school several weeks later, where they laid down their books and returned to the protest. According to mccomblegacies.org, ‘This was the first mass student-led movement in the state of Mississippi.’

Travis was only fifteen years old at the time. I wonder what I would have done in her situation, having to sit in prison for a month. 

Bella