Social Action Club hosts civil rights activist Shirley Jefferson

Shirley Jefferson gave an engaging and inspirational talk about her life as a civil rights activist and law professor to students in Mr. Clifford’s, Ms. Hagge’s and Ms. Perkins’s Block 5 English classes in the library on Thursday, February 16.

Danny Smith and Annie Hauze organized the event as part of the Social Action Club’s programming for Black History Month. In 2020, Danny Smith saw Professor Jefferson speak at a Black Lives Matter rally in South Royalton and recently invited her to speak at WUHSMS for this event.

She shared her story and her history as a little girl growing up in Selma, Alabama marching to Montgomery with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis, to living in Baltimore, Washington, DC and South Royalton, Vermont where she went to law school and is currently a law professor and the Vice President of Community Engagement and Government Relations at the Vermont Law School.

Throughout her talk, she gave encouragement and advice including, “Think of positive things in your life when you get down” and “Start thinking about what you want in your life.”

Her story is an inspirational one. She he integrated her high school in the early 1970’s—some twenty years after the US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board in 1954 was supposed to desegregate public schools. After explaining how she was passionate about her cases, she proclaimed, “Use your brain!”

When Isabel Konijnenberg asked Professor Jefferson if law school helped her tackle the injustices she had faced, Professor Jefferson explained that first she had to “let a lot of bitterness go” if she was “going to embrace the law.” She explained that before she could fight injustice for others she had to fight injustice within herself.

Ella Stainton asked about the effect she wanted to have on her students and Professor Jefferson replied, “I want them to know they can do it and I will fight for them.”