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The Tubman African
American Museum created the “Act of Courage” Awards to recognize
Georgia residents of all ages and races who
exemplify the word courage. Inspired by Harriet Tubman’s legacy,
we see courage as “standing up and taking action during
challenging circumstances to make a difference for yourself and
the lives of others.” This award unifies us all by raising
awareness of those who are making a difference.
The awards ceremony will be held
on October 9th, 2007 at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Check back for images from the ceremony.
The Act of
Courage Awards are being given to the following individuals:
There were dozens of
entries submitted with stories of wonderful, courageous people
who endured many challenges and overcame great obstacles. The
judges all remarked that it was awfully difficult to select the
winners. The Act of Courage awards were given to the following
seven people:
Lifetime Achievement
category: John Lewis (Atlanta, GA)
John Lewis, Civil
Rights leader and Congressional Representative for the 5th
U.S. District of Georgia, has been called “one of the most
courageous persons the Civil Rights Movement ever produced.”
Despite more than 40 arrests, physical attacks and beatings, and
serious injuries, Congressman John Lewis has remained committed
to the philosophy of nonviolent social change and steadfast in
his efforts to protect human rights, secure civil liberties, and
build what he describes as “the Beloved Community” in America.
“I’ve seen courage in action on many occasions,” Senator John
McCain has noted. “I can’t say I’ve seen anyone possess more of
it, and use it for any better purpose and to any greater effect
than John Lewis.”
Born in Troy, Alabama
in 1940, the son of sharecroppers, Lewis attended segregated
public schools as a youth and was inspired by the activism,
commitment, and success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott to
challenge Jim Crow and the color line. As a college student at
Fisk University, he organized sit-in demonstrations at
segregated lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, and in 1961
he volunteered to participate in the Freedom Rides, which
attempted to desegregate interstate bus terminals throughout the
South. Lewis risked his life on these rides and was severely
beaten by an angry mob. Two years later, he led 600 peaceful
demonstrators on a proposed march from Selma, Alabama to
Montgomery, the state capitol, to protest restrictions on voting
rights for African Americans. While crossing the Edmond Pettus
Bridge in Selma, Lewis and the marchers were brutally attacked
by Alabama state troopers in a confrontation that became known
as “Bloody Sunday” – an event which helped hasten passage of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Despite the many
threats on his life and the violence he encountered as a
participant and leader in these events, John Lewis remained
committed to the Civil Rights Movement and its goals. In 1963 he
was a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington and
was acknowledged as one the top six leaders in the Civil Rights
Movement. He also served as Associate Director of the Field
Foundation and Director of the Voter Education Project of the
Southern Regional Council, where he helped add almost 4 million
minorities to the voter rolls.
John Lewis’s devotion
to community service and his abilities and stature as a leader
and activist are also reflected in his political career. In 1981
he was elected to the Atlanta City Council, where he pushed for
ethics in government and neighborhood preservation. Five years
later, in 1986, he was elected to Congress, where he has served
for over two decades as the representative for Georgia’s 5th
district. Congressman Lewis is currently Senior Chief Deputy
Whip for the Democratic Party in the House, a member of the
House Ways and Means Committee, a member of the Subcommittee on
Income Security and Family Support, and Chairman of the
Subcommittee on Oversight.
As Time
Magazine noted, Congressman John Lewis’s life and career is “a
stirring portrait of the power of moral consistency and
courage.” For his bravery and steadfast devotion to human
rights, justice, and civil liberties for all Americans, the
Tubman African American Museum is proud to present Congressman
John Lewis with our first Tubman Lifetime Act of Courage Award.
Adult category: Bert
Bivins III (Macon, GA)
Bert Bivins III,
former electrician, teacher and currently a County Commissioner
of Bibb County, Georgia, has been involved in Civil Rights
activities since his teenage years. Following his graduation
from all-black Ballard-Hudson High School in Macon, he joined in
demonstrations against downtown stores that wouldn’t
desegregate, bus boycotts, sit-ins at the Woolworths, Holiday
Inn, and the YMCA (which gave up its charter rather than
integrate). Despite arrest and threats, he continued with his
activities, and in 1963, his efforts to get training in
electronics at an all-white vocational school led to the
desegregation of the Bibb County school system.
When Bivins applied
for admission to Dudley Hughes Vocational School, an all-white
institution run by the Bibb County School System, he was
suspended by the black administrators at Ballard Hudson and
warned by personnel supervisors at his job at Robins Air Force
Base that he might lose his job for this action. He was offered
the opportunity to return to Ballard-Hudson and receive
certification that he had passed the course without taking the
test or receive separate tutoring at night at Dudley Hughes.
Bert Bivins refuse these offers, determined that he would risk
his job rather than receive inferior or separate training. At a
stalemate, he decided to write Attorney General Robert Kennedy
to protest the fact that a program that was practicing
segregation was receiving federal funds.
With talk from
Federal officials that the school system could lose some federal
funding, the Bibb County Board of Education held a called
meeting in June 1963. The board voted to admit Bert Bivins to
Dudley Hughes as an exception to the rules of segregation. He
finished the training program with the highest average in the
class even though he was harassed in class and considered by
peers to be inferior.
These actions
required great resolve and courage. As Bivins himself recalled,
“You know what could happen, but if you’re committed to going,
you just go. You just do it. You don’t have time to really go
through the emotions at the time, but it hits you later.” Though
he is a quiet and soft-spoken man, Bert Bivin’s steely
determination not to accept second-class citizenship and
segregated facilities brought about a landmark change in Bibb
County’s educational system.
Adult category: Lois
Curtis (Roswell, GA)
Lois Curtis, artist
and advocate for the mentally disabled, was a resident at the
Georgia Regional Hospital in Atlanta in 1991, when she reached
out for legal assistance in her efforts to escape the isolation,
boredom, depression, and restrictions of institutional life.
Diagnosed with mental illness, Curtis had been hospitalized
repeatedly over two decades with periodic discharges (at times
to inappropriate facilities like a homeless shelter) followed by
returns to the hospital. She desperately wanted to escape to a
community setting where she could interact with people and
pursue her art, and her doctors concurred that she would fare
much better if she lived in the community and could participate
in the routine of normal life. The state of Georgia, however,
responded that they had no resources for treating the mentally
ill in facilities other than state hospitals and nursing homes
and repeatedly denied her request.
When Lois contacted
Sue Jamieson, at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society to ask for help,
a suit was filed on Lois’s behalf in federal district court
against the Georgia Department of Human Services, and a process
was set in motion that would eventually result in a landmark
U.S. Supreme Court decision. The suit, which became known as
Olmstead v. L.C. & E.W. was filed in 1995, with Lois Curtis
and Elaine Wilson (another resident of the Georgia Regional
Hospital with a similar story and history) listed as the
plaintiffs. The suit alleged that Lois’s and Elaine’s civil
rights were being violated under Title II of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, which required that public services be
administered in the “most integrated setting” that is
appropriate to the individual. Since both women’s doctors had
said that they could be treated in the community, their
continued segregation, according to the suit, was discriminatory
and therefore unlawful. The State claimed that it was not
discriminating against these women because they were only
keeping them in the hospital because the State couldn’t
immediately find additional money for community-based services.
.The federal district
court ruled in favor of LC and EW and ordered that the women be
placed in an appropriate community-based treatment program. The
US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision.
In a hearing at the Eleventh District Court following the
decision, Lois Curtis spoke on her own behalf and told the court
how she felt about having a place to call home. She talked about
things others take for granted -- having a glass of Kool-Aid
when she wanted it, listening to the radio, the small act of
walking outside. When the state appealed the decision to the
U.S. Supreme Court and the case was heard in 1999, Lois Curtis
and Elaine Wilson were again present. In a 6 to 3 decision, the
Supreme Court ruled that “unnecessary institutionalization
amounts to segregation and is a violation of individual civil
rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.” On June 18,
2001, President Bush followed up on this landmark decision by
issuing an Executive Order that called for the “swift
implementation of the Olmstead Decision,” and demanded that all
federal agencies to work with the states to ensure
community-based alternatives for individuals with disabilities.
Because of her
insistence that she be afforded the same rights as non-disabled
people, Lois Curtis brought about a sea change in how states
care for and assist the mentally and physically disabled. Today,
Curtis lives in a community group home, where she has the
opportunity she’s always desired to create and sell her art. She
also remains a compelling speaker, always advocating for people
with disabilities. For her persistence and bravery, DeKalb
County named May 2006 as “Lois Curtis Month,” and this summer
(July 3 to August 24 of this year) she was the featured artist
in a one-woman show at the Arts for All Gallery in the Healy
Building in downtown Atlanta.
Adult category: Nandi
Isaac (Macon, GA)
Nanditha “Nandi” Isaac
is a Special Olympics athlete and a spokesperson and advocate
for people with disabilities. Born with Down syndrome and
legally blind, Nandi moved to America from Sharjah in the United
Arab Emirates and eventually settled with her parents in Macon,
Georgia where she attended and graduated from the Georgia
Academy for the Blind.
When she was born,
Nandi’s doctor told her parents that she would probably wouldn’t
ever talk, walk, or even be toilet-trained. Instead, through
courage and perseverance, she has not only become a Global
Messenger or public speaker for the Special Olympics, but has
also participated during the last 15 years and won medals in a
variety of sports, including rollerblading, ice skating,
horseback riding, basketball, softball, and one of her current
passions – sailing. Nandi had to overcome fears, disabilities,
and other obstacles to enjoy and master these sports, but her
enthusiasm and courage is undaunted and her spirit unbowed. As
she wrote in one of her published journal entrees: “Special
Olympics sailing is very important to me because it is a
challenging sport, also very daring. Sailing may be easy for
some, but it’s not. It teaches you to be a team player it helps
you to be a good sport. . . Team skills are hard as you have to
move fast and listen to your partner. Also it is a dangerous
sport as your board can turn over or you can get struck by
lightning. You have to practice every week.”
Nandi is also a
spokesperson and advocate for the disabled. She and her mother
completed a 9-month course offered by Atlanta Alliance on
Developmental Disabilities called “Partners in Policy-Making”
that teaches people how to become self-advocates and establish
liaisons and working relationships between people needing
services and those that make laws affecting them. She has served
as a page at the state capitol during “Disability Week” and has
advocated with her mother for the “Unlock the Waiting List,”
which tries to get money appropriated for services for the
disabled, such as housing, assisted living counselors, etc.
In her roles as a
spokesperson and advocate for persons with disabilities and her
courageous accomplishments as an athlete, Nandi Isaac reminds
people and policy-makers that the disabled are an important and
contributing sector of our society and that we should always
focus more on a person’s ABILITIES than their disabilities when
we attempt to determine their worth or their rights.
Adult category:
Johnny Mitchell (Lizella, GA)
John T. Mitchell,
educator and administrator, was an active advocate for the
racial integration of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. In
late 1962, Mr. Mitchell, who was the Director of Admissions for
the university, wrote to then Mercer President, Rufus C. Harris,
and urged him to accept the application of young black man from
Ghana named Samuel Oni, who had been converted to Christianity
by a Mercer-trained missionary. Mercer was an all-white
institution at that time, but Mr. Mitchell emphasized to
President Harris that except for the color of his skin, Oni’s
academic credentials would have gained him admittance “without
question.” He then went on to ask President Harris, “Would this
young Christian understand that the doors to the University
which prepared the missionary who brought the Gospel are closed
to his converts?”
President Harris
followed Mitchell’s recommendation, and the enrollment of Sam
Oni desegregated one of the South’s best-known Baptist
institutions. But it wasn’t an easy task, even with the support
of the university’s president and most of the school’s faculty.
In January 1963, a committee of the Board of Trustees
unanimously recommended not to proceed with the admission of
blacks, and the Mercer Law School alumni passed a resolution
27-17 opposing the admission of black students to the university
(as did the Alumni Senate of the Delta Theta Phi Law
Fraternity). Others voiced more vocal, and violent, opposition.
As John Mitchell’s daughter recalls, “Few people know the
threats that were made on my dad’s life, his family, and life of
President Rufus Harris, but Johnny Mitchell kept on his
steadfast course and was successful in carrying out his peaceful
plan of integration. He did it because it was the right thing to
do.”
At the spring meeting
of the trustees in 1963, President Harris recommended that Oni
be enrolled and included this appeal in his report to the board:
“Now I would ask you to do a brave thing. I would ask you to
remove the barrier because I believe it is the right thing and
the Christian course to take. I ask it also because the
discrimination is, I believe, a barrier to Mercer’s progress.”
After a lengthy, two-hour discussion and substitute motions to
delay the decision for 60 days or admit Oni as a foreign
exchange student “without changing the admission policy
concerning African Americans, the Trustees voted 13 to 5 (with
three abstentions) in favor of integrating Mercer University.
In the same year that
Civil Rights activists in Birmingham were met with police dogs
and fire hoses and four young girls were killed in the bombing
of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Macon’s largest
institution of higher education voluntarily voted to desegregate
itself with court orders or massive demonstrations and admit a
young ministerial student from Africa – a decision and a process
that was launched by the recommendation of John T. Mitchell, who
like President Harris, knew it was the right thing to do.
Youth category:
Shaquinzela “Quin” Simpson
Quin is a Senior at
Westside High School in Macon, GA and plans to graduate in the
Summer of 2008. At the age of 14, Quin’s mother passed away.
Where most teenagers are concerned with fashion and boyfriends,
Quin was concerned about where she was going to live. Over the
past four years, Quin has lived in a variety of places and
endured quite a bit of change. As a protégé member of The
Mentors Project of Bibb County, she has made her mentor proud by
being a terrific example of someone who makes good choices and
has a positive attitude. Quin has been an inspiration to other
young people in the program, through her advocacy within the
Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. She has also been an asset
to the program by participating in several public speaking
engagements with local civic organizations; speaking on behalf
of the project and the impact that it has had on her life. Quin
is proud she is not a statistic, and that she is successful.
The Mentors Project
has nominated her for the Act of Courage award based on her
proven ability to overcome challenges, make good choices and
lead other disadvantaged youth in the right direction.
About The Mentor’s
Project of Bibb County:
The Mentors Project
was initiated in 1990 by the Education Committee of the Greater
Macon Chamber of Commerce. Mentoring was selected as a strategy
which research stated was a highly effective means to address
the Chamber's concerns for the success of students in the
community. At that time, over 600 students in Bibb County Public
School System were dropping out of school each year.
A pilot student
mentoring program was designed and implemented to provide adult
mentors for these at-risk students. The pilot program began at
Southeast High School and quickly expanded due to the high
success rate with the mentor/protégé pairs. Over the past few
years the Mentoring Program has grown from a handful of mentors
in one school to more than 130 in nine schools.
Mentors spend a
minimum of four hours a month with their protégés. Many spend
more, but that is at their own discretion. Mentor-protégé
contact may happen during school lunch visits, phone calls, or
personal meetings for breakfast together or after school snacks
and discussions. Many pairs also take occasional outings or
trips, which are encouraged.
The purpose of the program is to
provide disadvantaged students the motivation and encouragement
of an adult mentor role model who helps students learn to be a
success and to reach their potential. The mentoring provides
rewarding opportunities to become a positive influence in a
student’s life.
Through the match of a middle/high
school student in Bibb County, mentors' one-to-one relationships
provide a strong motivating force. The program has a
proven positive impact on the students' self-esteem and academic
performance. Ninety percent of the at-risk students enrolled in
our program have been saved from dropping out of school or from
receiving in-school suspension or assignment to one of the
alternative schools.
In the process of empowering
students for a better future, the Mentors Project of Bibb
County, Inc. provides a support system to ensure that more
students consider post high school educational or training
options, positively affect the students' behaviors and
attitudes, enhance the students' self-confidence, improve the
ability to resist negative peer pressure including drinking,
drugs, and pregnancy. The Mentors Project of Bibb County
provides a support system that strives to ensure that more
students become assets rather than burdens on their community.
For more information about The
Mentors Project of Bibb County, please see June O’Neal,
Executive Director 478-765-8624
Honorary Youth
category: Chris Johnson
Chris Johnson was a
football player and student at Northside High School in Warner
Robins, GA. In July of 2005, he was playing on the Northside
High football team as a freshman when he was diagnosed with
acute lymphoblast leukemia. Chris battled cancer that had
invaded his body by facing aggressive treatments that wore him
down physically for almost two years. Chris died in June, 2007
due to complications from his chemotherapy treatments.
Chris never once
complained about the pain or expressed sorrow for himself when
he lost the ability to do what he loved doing most; spending
time with friends/family and playing football. Instead he
constantly visited with the young pediatric oncology patients at
The Children’s Hospital to explain the medications and keep
their spirits of hope alive. Chris was a devout Christian and
the complete team player.
Chris’s devotion had
a substantial impact on all the patients he came in contact
with. They eagerly waited for Chris to visit them. Chris also
touched the hearts of all the doctors, nurses, administrators
and board members at The Children’s Hospital in Macon, GA.
Chris was the
spokesperson for kid’s cancer at The Children’s Hospital. He
never missed the opportunity to speak on radio, TV or newspaper
about bone marrow transplants and kid’s cancer. During the two
years of his illness Chris was a regular guest on the Children’s
Miracle Network Telethon. Chris’s work with Jay’s Hope
Foundation led to the single largest day of African-American
bone marrow registrants in Middle Georgia history.
Chris Johnson’s
actions had such an impact on his coach, that Coach Nix
established a scholarship in Chris’s name through the Children’s
Miracle Network. Nix eulogized Chris at his memorial service
stating “Chris’s legacy will live a long time and if you knew
Chris, you know that Chris would do ANYTHING to help others”.
In his honor, Pat
Johnson, his mother, will accept the award on his behalf.
“This a terrific way for
the unsung heroes of Georgia to be recognized and appreciated
for their courage and contribution to society. Each story is an
inspiring reminder of the good that ordinary people do and the
power that people have to improve the world,” shared Dr. Andy
Ambrose, Executive Director for the museum.
“The Tubman Museum is
doing a wonderful thing by recognizing these people. It is an
honor to be connected with this organization,” expressed Mike
Dyer, Vice President and General Manager for Cox Communications.
Cox Communications
sponsored this contest and helped make it possible. The contest
will continue to be a bi-annual event, alternating with the
Sheila Awards.
Several high
profile and prestigious figures from Georgia volunteered to
judge the nominations and select the winners.
he judges include:
Monica Pearson, WSB-TV
Cathy Cox, President of Young Harris College, former
Secretary of State
John Grant, CEO of 100 Black Men Atlanta
Sylvia Anderson, President - AT&T Georgia
Frank McCloskey, VP Diversity & Corporate Relations,
Georgia Power
The deadline for entry
submission was August 24th, 2007. We are no longer accepting
nominations at this time. If you have someone you would like
to nominate, please be on the lookout for the next Act of
Courage contest; tentatively scheduled to begin in the
Summer of 2009. Details will be given here on the website
and publicized through the mews media.
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