TCU Students March In Honor Of Civil Rights Anniversary
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Walter Sanders stood at the lectern inside the Robert Carr Chapel on the campus of TCU Sunday afternoon, and started offering a lesson of gospel singing.
"Everybody stand up," the 21-year old college student encouraged.
With the assistance of two other students, Sanders led a small group of Chapel visitors through a selection of 'Freedom Songs.' The songs were traditional 'movement' hymns, sung by participants of civil rights marches of the 1960s.
For Sanders, the songs were used as teaching tools in his mission to share the intricacies of the steps taken during the civil rights movement. "I'm just teaching people what happened, and why it happened," he said.
That education from the Fort Worth accounting major included the leading of a 'Civil Rights' march through the campus of TCU.
With white placard signs indicating a mission of choice hanging at their chests, 25 students sang and marched to the university's student union. The march was not a protest action. Instead, Sanders wanted to explain to fellow students the background of the civil rights era, by putting them in similar shoes.
The University's Center for Community Involvement and Service-Learning sponsored TCU students like Sanders, who took the Civil Rights Bus Tour, in January. The tour routes students to various cities in the South, that are connected to the marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.
The tour included a stop in Selma, Alabama, where the 47th anniversary of the 'Selma to Montgomery' march occurred. The march is referred to as Bloody Sunday. On that day, Alabama State Troopers attacked and assaulted participants marching for voting rights. "We still have issues worth marching for," Sanders said while leading the campus march.
"I want students to know it was regular people involved in the movement, and why they did what they did."
