Community leaders speak to McCallie middle school students about their lives and careers at the Human Library event
It’s 9:30 Monday morning and the Brock-Lazenby Room inside Alumni Hall is filled with 81 McCallie sixth graders getting ready to interview 15 inspiring, generous adults on personal growth, priorities and leadership.
The brainchild of Middle School English teacher Weesie Cook and Middle School Learning Center Director Kelcey Watson, the purpose of the “Human Library” program was to bring together community leaders in medicine, education, law, and race relations to discuss their jobs and their lives with the students.
The idea first came to Cook and Watson from David Brooks’ book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Seen.
“People are eager, often desperate, to be seen, heard, understood,” wrote Brooks in his book. “And yet we have built a culture, and a set of manners, in which that doesn’t happen. The way you fix that is simple, easy, and fun: Ask people to tell you their stories.”
So that’s what happened from 9:30 to 11:30 on Monday inside Brock-Lazenby. Seated five to table, the sixth graders peppered the adults with questions about their lives and the adults responded with answers that would make the students think about the world they’ll soon enter and how they might learn from society’s past mistakes.
A vivid example: Elijah Cameron is the director of community relations and development for the Bessie Smith Cultural Center. A Chattanooga native who graduated from all-Black Riverside High in the mid-1960s, Cameron was asked by one of the sixth graders what his scariest moment in life had been.
Without hesitation, Cameron began to tell of the time he was headed back to Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, Texas, in December of 1966 after being home for Christmas. The car he was riding in with a couple of other people suffered a flat tire outside of Meridian, Mississippi, in the dark of night. When they got out to inspect the damage, Cameron saw a large cross burning on a nearby hillside.
“We knew what that was,” he said. “That was the KKK. We needed to get out of there fast.”
They got back in the car and drove on the flat tire to Meridian where they knew of a white-owned Esso station (now Exxon) that welcomed Black customers.
“Back then, it was widely known that Esso stations often served Black customers in the South,” Cameron explained. “In fact, two Esso stations in Chattanooga were owned by Blacks. We’d stopped at that station in Meridian before. Even though it was almost 10 o’clock when we pulled in, we knew the owner would help us. He not only got us a new tire, but a new wheel because we ruined the other one driving on the flat. There were good people back then, but you needed to know who they were and where to find them.”
Troy Rogers grew up in Knoxville, where his mother taught at now-defunct Knoxville College for 40 years, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). He’s now the Public Safety Coordinator for Chattanooga as well as serving as head of ViolenceInterrupters, a group of concerned citizens who, in Rogers’ words, “Fight for people who can’t fight for themselves.”
He told the students about his mother often walking out the front door of their home many mornings with food and blankets for her students.
“She’d tell me, ‘I can’t teach hungry people, I can’t teach people who are cold,’” Rogers told the kids at his table. “Helping people is how I find my happiness.”
Not all the stories were that serious.
Local physician Tom Langston ‘82 decided he’d turn the table on his students and ask the questions.
“I asked one of them, 'What is your favorite subject?'” he recalled. “The boy said, ‘Backwork.’ Then I asked what his second favorite subject was. He replied, ‘Lunch.’”
This healthy back and forth, this sharing of history and perspective and resolve, went on for roughly two hours. Watson said one of the goals for the Human Library event was simple: “We all have a lot of shared experiences. You have more in common with people than you realize.”
Yet it also helped the students reevaluate earlier positions they had on certain topics.
“I used to believe we shouldn’t let anyone into our country at the Southern border,” said William Miller. “But after listening to Dr. (Kelly) Arnold, whose father immigrated here from Italy, I had a new perspective. There are people trying to get here to start a better life for themselves and their families.”
When it ended, the adults took turns delivering a final thought for the students to take with them.
Gena Ellis, who has sent three sons to McCallie — Edward ‘16, Samuel ‘21, and William, a junior who will graduate in ‘25 — told the students, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Be who God intended you to be.”
Turner Howard, a 1965 McCallie grad who practices law in Knoxville: “Do what’s right when nobody’s looking.”
Community leaders speak to McCallie middle school students about their lives and careers at the Human Library event
Then, it was time for Dr. Everlena Holmes, a Civil Rights leader in the 1960s, to speak.
“Be open to all possibilities in life,” she said. “The world is changing, and more change is coming. You need to get on board with those changes.”
For 81 sixth graders to get to interact with adults who’ve changed so much in our community and beyond for the good is sure to make a difference going forward, both at McCallie and in the larger world those 81 students will one day enter as McCallie graduates.
Community leaders speak to McCallie middle school students about their lives and careers at the Human Library event