Teens from across the nation visited Wetumpka to learn about the past in hopes of making a better future.
Encampment for Citizenship has been working since the 1940s to build tomorrow’s leaders through learning and living in a diverse community. It’s all done through a three-week summer camp with lots of learning before and after the residential part of the program.
“You can’t look into the future without knowing the past,” EFC program director Jesus Salcido said. “There are a lot of similarities between the Civil Rights movement and the time we are in today. The power is in their voice.”
This year’s encampment is headquartered at Alabama State University and last week they visited the Elmore County Black History Museum to get a more personal history lesson from museum curator Billie Rawls and others. The 17 campers from across the country also got a chance to interact with youth from the area.
“They will find a lot of the issues they feel are local here, also translate to communities back home,” Salcido said.
The group has walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and visited the Civil Rights sites in Montgomery along with the Equal Justice Initiative sites. While the museum in Wetumpka might be small, it is significant. It is one of fewer than a dozen Rosenwald schools still standing in Alabama and houses artifacts with personal connections to Elmore County. It also has presenters who lived through the Civil Rights movement who are not necessarily represented by name in bigger projects.
“There is something to be said for local history where they say this is my family member,” Salcido said. “This person lived down the street. It teaches them people in their community are history makers even if they don’t get the platform or national recognition. Both are important.”
The 17 campers come from different backgrounds. They are white, Black, Hispanic and more. In Wetumpka, they were hosted by area youth and museum curator Billie Rawls. She reached out to area churches and organizations to bring together a diverse youth group. Holtville High School junior Rutledge Rogers answered the call and learned something not only about the encampment but a different side to Elmore County.
“It is giving me a different view and perspective of our community,” Rodgers said.
The conversations experienced by youth at the encampment is exactly what Salcido and EFC are looking for. It leads to respect of differing backgrounds, ethnicities, political leanings and more.
“The idea is not to allow facism to rise again,” Salcido said. “We want to build communities with different people and different walks of life.”
EFC has been around since 1946. The encampment creates a diverse community where the youth create a government for the three weeks they are together in person. The experiment gives youth a chance to see how important respect in a democracy is.
“It is extremely important to get the message across to them,” Salcido said. “They are the future change makers. Some are just about to be old enough to vote. It’s important because a lot of their time these days is spent on social media and on distractions.”
