Local students get a live history lesson.
Students visited with residents from the Mary Walker Towers Monday.
Her legacy is she learned how to read at age 100!
WDEF News 12's Mandy Odom shows us this lesson on literacy and the civil rights movement in today's look at What's Right With Our Schools.
Rev. John Edwards says, "It's history you know, but then it was pretty dangerous."
Reverend John Edwards remembers the civil rights movement..
He says, "We had to walk through that crowd and we start to walking, and I declare they were spitting on us. They were calling us all kind of names, and we just kept walking. We kept walking and walking and walking til a path just opened up and we was able to come through there without being abused."
They want students today to know what they went through, and why literacy is so important.
Executive Director of the Mary Walker Towers Foundation Vilutis Edwards Senior says, "Sometimes we take life for granted on the different advantages we have, but during the time they were coming up there was a lot of disadvantages, obstacles they had to overcome, and so we don't want to forget about our past, if by chance we might have to repeat."
Notre Dame 11th grader Parker Judd says, "Literacy breaks all barriers, be it white or black."
These students from Notre Dame say it gives them a perspective on history like they've never had before.
Notre Dame 12th grader Sophie Mullin says, "We always learned about it in school, and it always seems like it was so far in the past, and just like it was a long time ago, and this kind of helps you to relate to it and realize it wasn't that long ago at all and like how much things have changed in such a short amount of time."
Judd says, "Like cause Dr. King is like idolized, and you never think of him as an actual person to have an actual friend, and there's like one of the people who was right there next to him, walking with him."
Howard students will be crossing the street to the Mary Walker Towers all this week to celebrate literacy and Black History Month.
In Chattanooga, Mandy Odom, WDEF News 12.
