Giving Hope: Biggest Crowd Yet at YWCA Greenwich’s Stand Against Racism Event

Friday’s YWCA Greenwich Stand Against Racism event – their 17th annual gathering – included so many people it was difficult to fit everyone into a group photo.

The event aims to raise awareness of the impacts of all forms of discrimination and racial violence, but also to build a stronger community among those who work for racial justice.

Friday’s gathering was a hopeful sign.

YWCA Greenwich Director of the Center for Equity and Justice, Simone Quartey, and YWCA Greenwich President and CEO, Mary Lee Kiernan shared details of a trip to they made to Georgia and Alabama with the UJA of Greenwich and UJA of Stamford last summer.

The group visited civil rights monuments and museums, which Kiernan said was both moving and disturbing.

She said the experience uncovered much more detail than any in the group knew about the nation’s history, and that the history of hatred and violence was especially difficult against the backdrop of the ongoing war in the Middle East.

One of the civil rights landmarks the group visited included the King Center in Atlanta, which was established by his wife in 1968, the year of Dr. King’s assassination.

At Sunday services at the iconic Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. King served as co-pastor, Reverend Raphael Warnock, US Senator from Georgia, delivered a sermon.

In Montgomery, Alabama, the group visited the sites within the Equal Justice Initiative, including the national memorial for peace and justice. Its purpose is to tell the story of racial terrorism, including mass lynching campaigns perpetrated against men, women and children until as late as 1950.

Ms Quartey said the museum featured an exhibit with 805 stone beams that at first hang just inches from the ground and then rise to surround visitors as they make their way through the exhibit.

Ms Kiernan said EJI documented 6,500 racial terror lynchings in the US between 1865 and 1950 and thousands more deaths may never be discovered.

And while most of the terror lynchings happened in the south and southestern part of the US, they happened as far west as California, in the midwest as far north as Montana and North Dakota, and in the east as far north as New York and New Jersey.

“It’s essential that when we talk about racial violence, that we humanize the lives of men, women and children who were victims, families that never got closure, those who never came home and those whose lives ended in spectacle, pain and shame,” Ms Quartey said.

For example, justifications given for lynchings included that of Jack Turner, lynched in Butler, Alabama in 1882 for organizing Black voters in Choctaw County.

In 1918, Mary Turner was lynched with her unborn child in Georgia after she complained about the recent lynching of her husband, Hayes Turner.

In addition to visiting the Equal Justice Initiative, the group visited The Legacy Museum, that connects the trans-Atlantic slave trade to slavery, Jim Crow, and finally to present-day mass incarceration.

There, visitors are provided insight to the lives of people imprisoned often as minors or facing harsh sentencing for minor offenses.

Kiernan quoted the EJI Founder Bryan Stevenson, who said, “Slavery gave America a fear of Black people and a taste for violent punishment, and both still define our criminal justice system.”

Kiernan recommended Stevenson’s TED talk, which has been viewed almost 9 million times:

Another stop on the trip was to the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, named in honor of the woman known for being arrested for not giving up her seat when the whites-only section of the bus was full.

Ms Parks, a seamstress with deep connections to the NAACP as an organizer, had an impeccable reputation within the local Black community, which is what made her arrest the ideal catalyst for the boycott that ultimately resulted in the de-segregation of the bus system via a federal court ruling.

Ms Quartey said there was a misperception that civil rights protests were spontaneous. Rosa Parks was not the first to protest segregated buses via civil disobedience, but she was deemed by local civil rights leaders to be the most appropriate.

The group from Stamford and Greenwich also visited the Edmund Pettus Bridge, now a national historic landmark, in Selma, Alabama.

There they learned that its namesake was a Confederate Solder and Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Kla, “KKK.”

Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that the KKK, with its long history of violence, and longtime theme of  “taking back the country,” is the oldest and most infamous of American hate groups.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Although Black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, adherents also attack Jewish people, persons who have immigrated to the United States, and members of the LGBTQ community.”

Ms Quartey referred to “Bloody Sunday,” on March 7, 1965, when peaceful demonstrators attempted to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but were met with brutal violence resulting in injuries from tear gas, beatings and tramplings.

There were several further attempts by protesters to cross the bridge, but it was not until the third attempt that Martin Luther King led a group successfully across it, enabling them to march on to Montgomery.

Ms Quartey and Ms Kiernan’s group also visited, Freedom Park, where there is a plaque commemorating the life of Anne Frank, a German girl and Jewish victim of the Holocaust, famous for keeping a diary of her experiences.

“Little known fact, Dr. King and Anne Frank would have been the same age, as they were born in the same year,” Quartey said.

“It is important to remember that the terror of racialized violence – whether it be lynchings in America or the Holocaust in Europe – stems from the same poisoned tree of de-humanization,” Quartey added.

At their stop at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the group learned that the town originated as a company town where people of all races and ethnicities had worked together until the advent of Jim Crow laws.

The KKK was an active force who used bombing as a means of intimidation, earning that city the moniker, “Bombingham.”

On Sunday, Sept 16, 1963 the KKK placed bombs at the 16th Street Baptist Church, rocking the church to its foundation and resulting in the deaths of four young girls who were getting ready for church services.

Today the girls are memorialized with a bronze statute at Birmingham’s Freedom Park.

2024 YWCA Greenwich Gender and Racial Justice Scholarship Awards

During the second part of Friday’s Stand against Racism event, Greenwich Public Schools Deputy Superintendent, Dr. Ann Carabillo introduced the student recipients of the 2024 YWCA Greenwich Gender and Racial Justice Scholarship Awards.

Zara Haque, a member of the Greenwich High School class of 2025, is a member of the First Selectman’s Youth Commission. She is also vice president of General Assembly of Model United Nations as well as Debate Team and Empowerment Club Co-Presidents at GHS.

Zara participated in the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair where they examined social drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic and earned two first place prizes.

Zara is also the STEM Coordinator for the Greenwich chapter of STEM to Stern, which introduces rowing and STEM education to eliminate barriers of participation and increase representations of youth from historically marginalized communities.

Dr. Carabillo said GHS senior Geronimo Diaz Lopez stood out at school a notable leader. Through the lens of growing up in Colombia, he has shed light on issues that impact all communities, addressing inequalities in marginalized communities whenever the content or class discussion provides an opportunity to do so.

For example, she said Geronimo had helped educate students on the impact of colonization on infrastructure and culture in South American countries.

Further Geronimo had worked at the YWCA Greenwich for more than two years, aiding efforts to eliminate racism and empower women.

Dr. Carabillo introduced Ceanna Hidalgo, a senior at GCDS, as an advocate and champion of equity work at her school.

Ceanna utilized all the opportunities that came her way to invest and grow the equity program in the GCDS high school. As a freshman, she saw the need for a students of color association and advocated to the administration to begin this affinity program, now the largest affinity space at GCDS.

Then, during her sophomore year, due to her intersecting racial and ethnic identities, Ceanna advocated to the administration for a Latinx and Asian-American and Pacific Islander affinity space. This meant securing a faculty advisor, planning bi-weekly meetings, and all school events for GCDS students to immerse themselves in a culture that might be different from their own.

Most recently, Ceanna wrote a proposal to the GCDS head of school to advocate for an acknowledgment at graduation to be made for first-generation college bound students. Now, at GCDS graduation, first-generation students will be acknowledged for their work and effort, and the significance of their college admissions to their families and the impact this will have on generations to come.

Ila David and Sophia Sigro, seniors at Sacred Heart Greenwich, were recognized for their joint efforts in gender and racial justice.

The girls lead a group that sponsors monthly lunch discussions and topics, ranging from affirmative action to the treatment of migrants, in the process providing important respectful community guidelines for civil discourse. Their project has connected students and faculty in discussions around race, gender, and justice.

Ila and Sophia have also addressed concerns from students of color regarding their presence in marketing materials which, to them, seemed staged and inauthentic. Dr. Carabillo said Ila and Sophia helped create a student group that will consult alumni and the marketing team to create literature and publications that more organically communicate the experiences of students.