From Lexie Kasdan:

I have been thinking a lot about the issue of white guilt — especially after the bus conversation and a follow-up dialogue in Tim's room. I have come to see guilt as a very selfish and useless emotion. It is a natural response — it happens. White people who are interested in black culture and history often feel bad about their whiteness. But this feeling breeds defensiveness — when you feel guilty you are edgy and self-interested. This leads to dishonesty, and it is really hard to talk about race if we cannot be honest.

From Joe Fronczak:

One thing I heard come up that disturbs me was talk about being politically correct. Personally, I think we can be sensitive to other people without being politically correct and I think there is a danger in speaking politically correct as it is designed to keep from saying something offensive. Sometimes this comes at the cost of honesty. One of the keys to this trip is that people have spoken honestly.

From Joshua Moise:

I hate being white. I hate being [among] those who tried to murder the will of another race. And I know I am not removed from it … I wonder if anyone else feels like this … I hope I'm strong enough to take the truth. I hope I can face my history and love myself.

From Marjorie Cook, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi:

These pages in my notebook seem sacred – where I wrote Mrs. Dahmer’s words – as she allowed herself to reexperience that "fearsome thing" they lived with, rolling flames, the betrayal of her country, the man she wed and had children with – dead. All these white folks I’m with sought hugs from her. I wanted to ask how it felt to embrace all those bodies as white as Klan robes.

Afterwards I went to the Student Union with Gwen and Jeff. I sat at a table with them while they ate lunch. I was too busy pondering to eat, so I got up and wandered around this commons area where college recruiters had set up tables and scores of high school students were milling around. A couple of girls burst through the doors from outside. They were fairly hysterical – crying and calling – "Oh my God, somebody call 911," and such things. I understood that a girl had gotten hurt outside and, since I have been certified, and recertified, and recertified….in First Aid, I knew I had to go and check on the situation.

The crowd of students and recruiters and miscellaneous other folk were now quite agitated by the crying and calling, and, I suppose, the helplessness one feels when things go bad and you know something needs to be done and that you should offer a hand but you don’t really want to because you don’t know what to do…it’s all very scary.

So I run outside, through this big crowd, and I make note that they have created a nice, neat perimeter about 10 feet away from the girl who’s been hurt. It’s as if an invisible barrier – transparent police tape or something – has gone up around the scene of the accident. But it’s fear and revulsion that makes people keep their distance. I hear several people say, "I can’t go over there. I can’t look."

I know I can’t NOT go over to this girl because she needs help. It’s especially obvious she needs help because only 2 other women have approached to help her. I cross the distance of open pavement between the crowd and the girl and I notice one of her feet is sitting at an angle perpendicular to her leg. In its place is a length of exposed bone, several inches long.

So what do I think? I think "I don’t want to look at it, either!" (as I recall the "I can’t look"s from the members of the crowd). I’m surprised she’s not bleeding. I’m surprised the girl isn’t in more pain. I offer her my favorite sweater to rest her head on. I wonder if she realizes that her foot is no longer attached to her leg. I watch for signs that she’s going into shock – trying to forget about the foot so I can recall what a person looks like when going into shock. I talk to her and smooth her hair away from her face. I try to provide the comfort of a mother because I know this is what she needs, and I would want the same for Devon if he were lying there on the cement.

It’s a while before I realize the girl is very dark. Perhaps she is Latina. I first notice she’s not white because of the color and sheen of the hair I am touching. At that moment, race and history and what who thinks what about who, none of it mattered.

If we had walked past one another, I would have been reluctant to speak to this young woman. I would have expected her to look at the color of my skin and feel anger and mistrust. It’s likely she would have expected the same of me.

From Jerome Dotson, on Clarksdale, Mississippi:

Clarksdale was the South I expected to encounter. It was places like the Delta Amusement Café that caused me to leave Georgia. Walking around the downtown area of Clarksdale it reminded me a little of some of the small towns in South Georgia that my family used to travel to for family reunions, in other words there was nothing out of the ordinary about this place/town. When we entered the Delta Amusement Café, a man at the counter was quite cordial encouraging us to sit any place we liked. While we saw a number of black folk ordering at the counter none ate inside the restaurant. At the time I thought nothing of this, but thinking about it now this should have been a sign to me. As I think back to Issac Freeman’s remarks on reading people and places, I wonder if he would have even entered a place like this not because he was scared but because he could have seen the signs well in advance.

After ordering my meal I joined Brad over at the fountain drinks machine. I had just finished filling my cup when a couple of local white men walked over. They asked Brad and I where we were from. At this point I could see where the conversation was going so I began making my way to our table. After Brad told them we were from Wisconsin, I could hear them ask next what we were doing/studying. I knew then that I wasn’t going to say a damn word about us being on a "Freedom Ride" so I sat down. I could see them talking to Brad a few more seconds and then the two men walked away laughing. When Brad got back to the table he told me what they had said. After he told them we were in a class about the Civil Rights movement, one of the men turning to the guy standing with him said "yeah, he was in the Civil Rights movement too, but he was on the other side." Now as I write this none of it shocks me and it really doesn’t anger me either, but I am frustrated because even though this was the South I expected to encounter, I hoped that I wouldn’t. My friends and I call people (white folk) like those in Clarksdale, the unreconstructed. But what do you do about unreconstructed white folk?

But my experiences in Clarksdale did not end here. After we finished eating, Matt and Genella walked over and told us to check out the flags in the room adjacent to ours. Walking over I saw two flags on the wall, one confederate flag and a Mississippi state flag with the stars and bars on it. In the other room, I also saw Leah and Yoseph who were sitting at a table near the kitchen. Leah, who was visibly bothered, asked me to sit down with them. There were two older men playing cards next to their table and one of the men kept leering at them. In a strange way I learned the importance of community at that moment because seeing how bothered Leah was made me more determined to be there for her.

After they finished eating, Yosef and Leah wanted to take pictures in front of the confederate flag. Now at this point I got nervous because I know this is the type of thing/behavior my parents would discourage. Growing up in the South, I never got any lessons on staying in my place, but certain things were just understood. Taking a picture in front of the confederate flag in a restaurant in Clarksdale, Mississippi was one of those things you don’t do, but we did it and nothing happened to us. In fact, the man at the register asked us to stop by again the next time we were in town. That is when I saw how much things had changed even in Mississippi. There would have been a time in the not too distant past when at a minimum they would have asked us to leave, or maybe something worse would have happened, but now the only thing the local white folk did was glare at us with angry looks.

Clarksdale forced me to see how much hasn’t changed in the South and how much has changed; now I see that places like Clarksdale, Mississippi can change and this is something I had always questioned before.

From Joshua Moise:

The real work lies ahead … The more I think about it my people are not white, not black, not anything. They are the people who squeeze happiness from truth in all its forms. They are the young, the old, the yet to be.