Activist who marched with MLK speaks at event marking 70th anniversary of Brown v. BOE
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The pain Black Americans endured during the civil rights movement and the years leading up to it may seem like a distant memory.
For Joanne Bland, those memories of the fight for equality are just as real today.
"It seems like we're going backwards," said Bland. "Sometimes I wake up and think we're paralleling that time, it's 1953 all over again."
A lifelong civil rights activist, Bland's memories include marching with Dr. Martin Luther King across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
Bland spoke Friday during a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown v. BOE ruling in 1954.
That ruling declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
It remains one of the biggest victories of the civil rights movement; a victory Bland says many kids don't feel connected to because they don't learn about it in school anymore.
"It seems as though once the Voting Rights Act was passed, that we stopped learning about our systems," Bland told 21 News.
Bland also urged young adults to learn about the candidates and the issues, then bring their desire for change to the ballot box - a right that people fought and died for.
"It doesn't take much out of your day to go mark a ballot," said Bland. "You sound like an idiot...talking about 'you're not voting'."
Bland calls voting the only true way to achieve The Constitution's promise: equal protection under the law.
A promise that, for some, remains unkept.
"I don't want my child to be any better than your child," Bland said. "I just want the playing field to be level so that my child is not going uphill while yours is walking straight."