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Bettie Mae Fikes spoke to Eugene School District 4J high schooler students this week. Fikes was in town to speak at the Oregon Education Association equity and inclusion summit over the weekend of May 30-31.
Civil rights activist Bettie Mae Fikes visited Eugene high schools this week, giving students an opportunity to hear from a living representative of the 1960s movement to end racial segregation in America.
She wove stories with freedom songs in her presentation to Churchill High School students on Friday, May 29, and centered her message on the heart.
“What has been left out of this movement, this country and this world is love,” Fikes said. “Our purpose is to love one another.”
Fikes, now 80, was the same age as many of the students in the audience when she joined the civil rights movement in her home of Selma, Alabama. She was part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers. Led by Black college students, the SNCC played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement.
“They don’t tell the story, but the children were the ones that conquered Selma,” Fikes said. “Later on, the adults took credit for it.”
On the stage at Churchill, she gave firsthand accounts of being shocked with cattle prods and seeing fellow protesters beaten, kicked and humiliated during restaurant sit-ins and boycotts, while perpetrators faced no consequences.
Fikes also tasked students with thinking about their own futures and what their legacies will be.
“I don’t want you to sympathize, I want you to get up to some good trouble,” Fikes said.
Eugene School District 4J Superintendent Miriam Mickelson said the district was fortunate to receive financial support from the Eugene Education Foundation, the philanthropic nonprofit that supports 4J, to host Fikes, who is in town to speak at the statewide teachers union summit on equity and inclusion.
“I hope our young people are reminded that they can make a difference, and that young people, ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference and leave a lasting impact,” Mickelson said.
Sebastian Bolden, 4J’s director of secondary schools, said Fikes also met with smaller groups of students who connected with her message. Bolden said there were lots of hugs and tears, and he credited Fikes for her graciousness and personal approach with students.
Junior Sebastian Moore, vice president of Churchill’s Black Student Union, introduced Fikes. He said he will carry with him her most urgent message: to love one another and believe in yourself.
“She’s one of the richest people she knows because of the love that she has,” he said. “You hear that a lot in cheesy movies, but it’s different when somebody genuinely believes that and you can see that in how they hold themselves and how they treat others. She really is just an icon.”
