The Modesto teens and young adults may have come to the King-Kennedy Memorial Center on Saturday to hear nationally known civil rights leader Robert Moses, but Moses was more interested in hearing what they thought.
Moses, 73, was in Modesto to speak at Modesto Junior College on Saturday night as part of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration. He stopped by the King-Kennedy center to give the teens a history lesson and to prod them into thinking about how to improve their schools and their lives.
A pioneer in the civil rights movement who worked on the voter registration drives in Mississippi in the early 1960s, Moses quizzed the Modesto students on key dates and elements of the civil rights movement, the U.S. Constitution, the Civil War and Jim Crow laws.
"We are here to try to think about what has happened, because what has happened impacts all of us. How we got where we are didn't happen overnight," Moses said. "If you can understand how we got here, you can figure out where we need to be. We are not there yet."
Moses slowly drew out a history lesson for the students, interspersing his own story of working in the deep South on voter registration, riding in a car that was targeted by gunfire, being arrested, and knocking on a lot of doors to get people to vote.
The students were quizzed on what they thought of Barack Obama's election, what it meant to them and how they would like Obama to change things.
They told Moses about Project Uplift, a program led by community activist John Ervin that gives young people direction and inspiration to reach their goals.
"We all used to be immature," Davis High School student Rahsaan Wooten told Moses. "Now we have at least a 3.0 (grade point) average. It does work, just knowing it's not a bad thing to be smart."
One of the goals of Project Uplift, said Marcus Gullatt, a Modesto High student, is to help other young people.
"Our goal is to get down to the level they are at and push them up," Gullatt said. "We can be whatever we want to be if we put our mind to it. I'd like to instill a positive attitude. A negative attitude is not acceptable."
Moses asked them what they would like to see a federal economic stimulus program do to help them in school.
Rosa Stanley, a Modesto High School student, said she would like to see more universities and colleges recruiting on campus, rather than military recruiters.
"There's inequality in the way (the military) recruit. It's always working-class colored people they recruit," Stanley said. "We need to get colleges out there; not just Modesto Junior College, but UC Merced, UC Berkeley, UC Davis," she said.
Other students wanted a place to meet, socialize and get kids off the street, where there would be help for homework as well as fun things to do.
Moses ended the session with a talk about the importance of learning math in a computer-driven society.
"At a minimum, you have to take math every year in high school," he told them. Moses used a MacArthur Fellowship grant in the 1980s to set up The Algebra Project, a program to help middle school students prepare for algebra.
Stanley said afterward that she found Moses to be inspirational.
"I've been studying a lot about Martin Luther King. Hearing someone who actively was in the movement, you get a new perspective of how things were," she said. "I thought it was great how he made time for youth."
Bee staff writer Tim Moran can be reached at tmoran@modbee.com or 578-2349.
