San Bruno, CA (CBS5) -- Decades after the civil rights movement, it's hard for young people to understand those times. But this week's Jefferson Award winner is bringing that piece of history alive.
Name an event or person from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, and Bay Area history teacher Jeff Steinberg knows the story.
"I'm inspired by people who put themselves on the line for something bigger than themselves," said Steinberg. "Who defines that better than people in the civil rights movement?"
Seven years ago, Steinberg began taking his passion for the non-violent principles of the movement on the road --literally -- organizing student trips to the South he calls Sojourns to the Past.
"It's a journey of one's soul. I don't call this Black history either. This is American history. This is our shared history," Steinberg said.
The whole idea of Steinberg's Sojourns to the Past is not just to bring the pages of history to life, but to actually bring changes to the lives of people who go on the journey.
Rosa Hoskins and Greg Escolta, both 16-year-old high school juniors, and their social studies teacher Marin Alridge, are among more than 100 students, teachers and parents taking one of Steinberg's journeys.
Traveling some 8,000 miles to five southern states, visiting sites of key civil rights scenes from Montgomery, Alabama's Civil Rights Memorial to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King was assassinated.
A day before the trip began, expectations were high.
"I want it to help me to be more a leader and make me take more of a stand and say, 'don't do that, it's wrong,' " Hoskins said.
"Hopefully it makes me a better person, more understanding, more open-minded," Escolta said.
Steinberg's sojourns are hard work. It's 10 days of intensive travel and study. But it's also exhilarating when students meet people who actually participated in the civil rights movement.
They enjoyed singing freedom songs with one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Arkansas' Central High School in 1957, and with Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr.
Returning from their sojourn, Hoskins and Escolta did do something courageous. They took a stand against a fellow student using the N-word.
Steinberg says young people return from his trips as better citizens.
"Students who are 17 or older, 80 percent of our kids say that they will be voting when they come home," he said.
So for inspiring more than 3,000 students so far with his up close and personal look at recent American history, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Jeff Steinberg.
By Barbara Rodgers
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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