I went on the Honors Freshman Jan Term Race Across America trip in 2016, not really knowing what it would be like or how it would transform my thinking. If I had not entered into the Honors program when I first came to Whitworth, I never would have been able to have this experience of interactive, real learning. Most freshman must spend their first Jan Term on campus, in the snow-coated Whitworth bubble. But I was able to go outside my comfort zone and be truly challenged. Jan Term should be a time where you learn experientially, where you gain not just knowledge, but transformation. On this Jan Term, I got to touch the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, travel and navigate independently, try authentic pecan pie, sweet tea, and beignets, and explore the Southern part of the U.S. But what I really took from the trip was an understanding of my reality and my place in this world. Race Across America prepared me to think deeply about the world and my place in it, which is something that impacted not just the way I learn, but the way I think, feel, and react to injustice to this day.

           Royal Street, 9pm: the houses were dark and the wind silent. A stray musician wandered by, murmuring rhythms to his disheveled mutt, and a group of drunkards stumbled past, working their way loudly to the next bar. The houses on Royal were locked and hushed, the eerie stillness only interrupted by people passing through. It was here, in my Air B&B on Royal Street, in New Orleans, Louisiana, that I understood why the silence felt so wrong, why these moments made me feel shaken and uncomfortable. There was something still unspoken here.

           In Charleston, South Carolina, it was the voices of the slaves at Boone Hall and the church-goers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church. At Boone Hall, a strikingly beautiful plantation on a hill in Charleston, tourists heard the stories of the white Southern life during the 1800s and the happy lifestyles of the hundreds of slaves who suffered there. At Emanuel A.M.E. Church, wreaths of flowers memorialized the shooting of nine African American worshippers by a racist Southern white man in 2014. He was still being tried. Underneath the beauty of South Carolina was this theme of racial injury, the public market a place where slaves were sold less than 200 years ago.

           In Washington, D.C., it was the cold that left the homeless population shivering, seeking haven in any warm buildings, heaping dirty blankets over their backs. Business men in suits walked by without even looking. The majority of the homeless population was African American. We also got to enter into the brand new Smithsonian of African American History, and at the center of the museum was a statue of our foundational figure of freedom, Thomas Jefferson, bricks stacked behind him with the names of his slaves.

           In Birmingham, Alabama, it was the obvious red-lining of the area. We stayed in a “black neighborhood” and were noticed almost immediately for our race. “Ayeee, white people!” someone shouted from their car. We visited a restaurant in a “white neighborhood” and none of the buildings were worn down or foreclosed, none of the streets were troubled by homeless people, none of the residents were African American. What was safe or unsafe was broken apart by race, something that had been decided by segregation years before.

           In Montgomery, Alabama, it was hopeful, far more hopeful than other places in the South. The Equal Justice Initiative was building a memorial to respect lynching victims, whose voices had been unheard for years, whose bodies had been brutalized without retribution. We also saw the Greyhound bus, where college-age Civil Rights activists had been beaten for riding with other races.

           And in New Orleans, Louisiana, it was the contrast between the rage of Bourbon Street, with beads flying, children drumming, and people shouting, and the emptiness of the Lower 9^th Ward, depicting poverty, pain, and slow recovery. The city was two-sided, but the appeal seemed to be for the party on Bourbon, not in helping the still struggling residents from Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

           Here, sitting exhausted at the edge of my bed on the last day of the 23-day journey across America, I realized that the quiet was a haunting reminder of what our young country was responsible for. I decided for myself at 18-years-old that when I returned to Washington State, I would not live in a way that let peoples’ suffering be forgotten. I would become a person that helped unheard voices speak and helped my own community hear.

Written by Katie Lacayo ’19