♪♪ ♪♪ >> Woman: Who is our school named after?

Miss... >> Girl: Lacey!

[ Laughter ] >> Jones: Don't let anybody, any third party determine whether or not you can do this and you can do that.

>> Robert: It's an honor to meet you.

I just want to shake your hand.

>> Jones: Thank you.

>> Robert: We're still not there yet.

And I feel like he's a big part in us coming together.

>> Gonçalves: I don't know if they understand when we first start how big this project's going to be for them.

But in the end, just watching them grow through the process, understanding it, learning it, owning the information is very important.

>> Prarthana: I've always kind of been really interested in civil rights.

I think this bill in particular is very important.

It's clear that racism is still prevalent in society today and we're still fighting for justice of these victims.

>> Spiller: This week on "Classroom Close-Up New Jersey," students are celebrating civil rights heroes.

We'll visit classrooms across the state where young people are honoring the legends who have helped to shape America.

♪♪ >> Students: Good morning, Miss Lacey!

>> Lacey: Good morning to you.

>> King: Having Miss Lacey here today is just a gift.

>> Students: I am kind.

>> Lacey: I am smart.

>> Students: I am smart.

♪♪ >> Narrator: Theodora Smiley Lacey was honored in 2020 when the Teaneck School District renamed a school after her.

>> Woman: And who is our school named after?

Miss... >> Girl: Lacey!

>> Narrator: Miss Lacey taught science there for 42 years.

>> Woman #2: All we're doing is learning how to tap our toes, so we're just tap, tap... >> King: We hold this building in very high esteem, and we know that everything that we do here is a representation of Miss Lacey and her legacy.

And so we come to work every day knowing that we want to make her proud.

>> Boy: Lacey school is fun.

>> Narrator: Her distinguished teaching career would have been enough of a reason to name a school after her.

But Miss Lacey's accomplishments go beyond the classroom.

Growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, Miss Lacey was literally at the center of the civil rights movement.

From an early age, Miss Lacey made the choice to become a civil rights activist and helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott.

But her activism didn't stop there.

In the mid-'60s, she moved to Teaneck and began teaching.

She started a movement to integrate schools in town, and through her efforts, Teaneck became the first district in the nation to vote for school integration.

>> Lacey: Thank you so much.

>> Girl: You're welcome.

>> Woman #3: Helping people... >> Students: Helping people... >> Woman #3: ...is the best gift... >> Students: ...is the best gift... >> Woman #3: ...you can give yourself.

>> Students: ...you can give yourself.

>> Cambridge: When we were told that the naming of the building, it wouldn't have been any justice to put any other name on the building.

To really highlight her as an educator.

>> Boy: Got to color it.

>> Lacey: Okay.

>> Cambridge: That is important to her.

She is legendary.

>> Man: How do you show loving?

There we go.

>> King: For many of our teachers and staff and community members, she's opened up the world in so many different ways, just kind of bringing, first and foremost, the civil rights struggle to our county and also bringing her education, her aptitude as a teacher.

Just having a living legend in our building and having the kids be able to see her and feel her presence is so important.

It's particularly important for our students of color to see this woman who has such a strong legacy here in Teaneck.

We treat her like a celebrity, but she's more like our grandma or our favorite teacher, and as a person who thinks strongly about equity and social justice for our kids.

>> Woman #3: Miss Lacey loves to help people.

Remember, she was a science teacher, she was an activist.

>> Narrator: Miss Lacey's journey began during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Imagine having that kind of connection in the classroom where young people interact with living history.

Not long ago, students in Palmyra welcomed another civil rights icon.

Here's an excerpt from a story we covered leading up to the visit.

>> Licata: We are continuing to work on our project to honor Palmyra's most famous alum.

A few years ago, we were informed that Clarence B. Jones, who is now a professor at Stanford, was actually an alumni of Palmyra High School.

He's a graduate of Palmyra High, and he graduated here in 1949.

And we were informed that he was actually the author of the first part of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

>> Tommy: We're laying the groundwork for our Clarence B. Jones kind of ceremony/banquet.

>> Licata: Budget team, design.

>> Tommy: We're dividing up into different groups.

>> Licata: History and master schedule.

We were working on some sort of project either to dedicate a portion of the school in his honor or to potentially set up some sort of institution for social justice in his name and ultimately have him here sometime hopefully in May or June.

We're long overdue to honor somebody who's been so successful from our tiny school.

>> Spiller: It's a story of social justice and of recognizing courage and resilience.

So we bring it to you now, a visit behind the dream and beyond.

♪♪ >> Licata: Dr. Jones, thank you for all that you've done for our nation and its citizens.

Today is your day.

We are honored to have you here.

And thank you for being such a positive role model for our students and this country.

>> Narrator: On a warm day in June, instead of thinking about summer vacation, students at Palmyra High School couldn't have been more excited.

This was the day they would gather to honor Dr. Clarence B. Jones, Palmyra High School class of 1949, for his achievements in civil rights history.

>> Jones: Think about it.

Yes, when I was 29 years old, and Martin Luther King Jr. was 31, I met him, and for 7 1/2 years thereafter, I would end up being his personal lawyer, speech writer, and political adviser.

But had I not had a foundation of self-confidence and education, I would not have been capable of responding to that opportunity.

I would have not had the skill sets.

>> Narrator: After graduation, he earned a law degree and dedicated his expertise to Dr. King and the civil rights movement.

In 1963, Dr. Jones helped organize the historic march on Washington and co-authored the "I Have a Dream" speech with Dr. King.

>> Licata: It's beyond our wildest dreams that he was able to make it here today and give such an incredible presentation and lifelong lesson, hopefully, for our students to always set high goals and believe in themselves and always try to look forward rather than looking back.

>> Jones: To paraphrase those extraordinary words from my brother when he's speaking about in the future.

"I have a dream," he says, "that my four children..." You notice he's speaking -- Martin Luther King Jr., he's speaking in the future tense -- that they will be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

>> Robert: It's an honor to meet you.

I just wanted to shake your hand.

>> Jones: Thank you.

God bless you.

>> Robert: We're still not there yet, and I feel like he's a big part in us coming together.

>> Man: I was on the track team with you.

>> Robert: Just the fact that he came from a place like this, small, everybody knows everybody, and he got that great education here.

I feel like it's just amazing.

>> Spiller: Thank you, thank you.

>> Licata: We are continuing to work on our project to honor Palmyra's most famous alum.

It was an idea that I had in January.

Lots of communication between the teaching staff, my students, the board of education, so it's been a massive undertaking, but it's so, so worth it.

Student buy-in has really led this whole project to go above and beyond anything I could have possibly imagined.

>> Matthew: So, I helped set up the budget for Clarence B. Jones visiting today.

So, along with a team of other students, we came up with a hotel, airline, food service for the catering tonight.

>> Jacob: I helped compose what will be revealed later on today down by the library.

>> Narrator: In recognition of Dr. Jones and his legacy, Palmyra High School arranged for a unique tribute, and "Classroom Close-up" was honored to be there.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] >> Jacob: I knew the importance of it, and I was very excited to do it.

♪♪ >> Narrator: Jacob's painting was unveiled in front of the newly renamed library, which will also include the Dr. Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy.

>> Jacob: I guess that kind of almost reflects what Dr. Clarence B. Jones had just learned, to work together and just co-exist as one.

>> Jones: Yes, I'm a realist.

You're a realist.

There are real problems you will face.

But I'm suggesting to you that you develop an inner gyroscope and a compass.

How you treat other people is a reflection of what you think about yourself.

>> Licata: For a small town, I think it's really important that their most important graduate, who's gone on to do tremendous things, is here today for the community to see, to touch, and to listen to his experiences and how Palmyra High School shaped his future in becoming a civil rights icon.

>> Jones: I want you to say that Dr. Clarence B. Jones came back to Palmyra High School to publicly acknowledge and thank with gratitude from the bottom of his heart!

The generosity, the teachers, the principal that made it possible.

>> Matthew: Mr. Licata being able to bring Clarence B. Jones back for us kind of added another aspect to the civil rights movement that we've learned about in other classes, but this one made it even more special, to be able to meet someone who was so important to it.

>> Jacob: I thought that, you know, it was good to commemorate someone that really made a name for themselves.

They came out of a small town that's no bigger than a mile by two miles.

And he -- The rest is history.

>> Spiller: Next, students continue to explore civil rights history by creating their own graphic novels.

>> Lorelle: It's about this boy named Daniel, and he's living in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights movement, and he becomes a Black Panther.

And it's about his life and what his family thinks of it and what happens to him.

>> Ian: We kind of had, like, before we started drawing and everything, what we decided to do was basically have, like, an outline, almost.

So we basically had Malcolm X and his entire life, everything about it.

As you can see, some of these are, like, flashbacks of him in prison because he went to prison.

We showed his involvement with the nation of Islam, his departure, and even his pilgrimage to Mecca.

>> Gonçalves: I enjoy seeing the students grow as they go through this project.

It's amazing how they start off, the first day I introduced this lesson, worried about, "I can't draw," to then, "My goodness, I didn't know anything about this.

I thought I knew Malcolm X, but I had no idea that he went through this as a young man."

And I don't know if they understand when we first start how big this project's going to be for them.

But in the end, just watching them grow through the process, understanding it, learning it, owning the information is very important.

What we're going to do today is we're going to start our graphic novels, all right?

So what I've done is I've put a couple of things together for us to take a look at.

I'm requiring them to draw.

I'm requiring them to research, and I'm requiring them to put a script together and develop an idea.

These are the graphic novels that other students put together last year, and this is what you're going to be focusing on, as well.

>> André: I was excited about it 'cause I love art and drawing.

So when I heard we were doing a comic book, it was just combining everything that I like.

>> Gonçalves: What I noticed a number of years ago was that students were reading graphic novels more than they were reading our traditional novels.

So the idea behind the project was that students would be able to take an event and translate it into some sort of graphic.

We're going to connect what we learned with the US1 class to the US2 class and make sure we follow Civil Rights through all of history.

So we're going to talk about different topics.

So, in this one, I think it's most powerful because they're making it their own.

They're creating a story.

And as teachers, as educators, we know that the best way to learn something is to actually have to teach it to somebody else.

>> Jade: We had four different topics, so we decided to kind of tie them together by making it seem like it was a grandmother telling her grandson the story for his school report.

And she talks about the Little Rock Nine and why schools are segregated and protests to end segregation.

And because we based it around her telling the story, we were able to make the story just one big story that continued on to the end.

>> Jade: It was definitely difficult because we wanted to make something real.

We wanted to have a situation where there was a kid during the Civil Rights movement and the struggles that a teen and, like, adult would go through during that time.

>> Leandro: You get more, like, sucked into it in a sense because you have to think about it and you have to get involved in it.

And I really like that.

>> Jet'aime: It allowed me to embrace my creative side, which I think helped me understand the material more because I was not only researching it, but then I also had to come up with dialogue to match it and then draw it myself, so it helped me remember it.

♪♪ >> Gonçalves: So, today is the day where everything gets on display.

So we've worked hard to put these together.

We've had the book digitized and bound into an actual real book with all the graphic novels.

And today, the students get to show the rest of the school what they've done.

So we've gone from thinking about the story, creating the story, and now we're at the last part of storytelling -- telling the story.

>> Devon: So, if I had to choose one favorite part, it would probably be this page right here, just because the Cotton Museum is what ties the whole story together, because we have the MLK assassination, the Poor People's Campaign, and then the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

>> Jet'aime: It feels really cool, especially when people see yours and they react in such a positive way.

It's like that hard work really did pay off in it.

It's a good feeling that people enjoy something that you really dedicated time to.

>> Jade: I think it came out amazing.

Everybody's comics look great.

They all tell a story, but they're all so different.

Even though some of us do have the same topics, they're all told a different way, which I think is amazing.

>> Gonçalves: It is incredible to see how much we've done and to watch my students be so proud of their work and own it.

>> Lorelle: My favorite page... Um, I kind of -- I like this one because it's an actual -- it's like a real moment between Daniel and his father.

I like that one.

I think that one's probably my favorite one.

>> Gonçalves: I always say that, you know, this is a project that lives beyond them.

When they graduate, this project will still be here.

I will still be sharing it with my students in my classroom.

So today is an exclamation point on all of what we've worked hard to do.

>> Spiller: The hard work that goes into these projects can lead to answering questions about unresolved issues, as we'll see in our next story.

>> Wexler: We're still talking about issues of racial violence in our classrooms today.

Maybe if we start talking about the stuff that still wasn't resolved from 50 years ago, we could start understanding why there's issues to this day.

We never healed the original wounds in many cases.

Partner up with somebody and update that person about where you are presently at trying to get representatives and lawmakers to meet with.

>> Narrator: Stuart Wexler and his AP government and politics class are three years into the process of getting a bill called the Civil Rights Cold Case Act made into law.

>> Wexler: We're the first high school class to ever write a law that I know of to actually get a bill introduced into the House of Representatives.

It's now these third year students to try and take this to the finish line and get it introduced in the Senate and hopefully through the Senate and out of the Oversight Committee in the House and through the other stages of the House process.

>> Narrator: Stuart's previous classes drafted the bill, and if it becomes law, will facilitate the release of documents in unsolved civil rights cases, like the Wharlest Jackson and Emmett Till murders.

>> Wexler: Wharlest Jackson is one of many cases.

You have a person in Mississippi, activist in civil rights, he's killed.

There's very strong suspicion if the Silver Dollar Group had something to do with it, they were sort of a violent offshoot of the Klan there.

>> Narrator: Wharlest Jackson was killed by a car bomb, and 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched for allegedly catcalling a white female store owner.

>> Samantha: Later, it was found out that it had actually not happened at all.

She had not been catcalled.

And this poor man was lynched for no reason.

We feel like is if we provide context to our bill through use of Emmett Till, it would help us push forward.

>> Ali: Right now, I'm working on Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Well, once our bill becomes law, we will find that a lot of these cases should see some sort of prosecution.

There are a lot of bills that get introduced in the House, and only a few of them move on past committee.

That's what we want to do.

We want to move ours past committee, and that requires putting it at the top of the list.

>> Wexler: Then we spend a lot of the time actually making calls and e-mailing congresspeople and try and get as many appointments with actual staffers as humanly possible in hopes that we could just get on their agenda.

[ Line ringing ] >> Janet: This is Janet.

How can I help you?

>> Young woman: Hi.

I was wondering if I could have a meeting with Joni Ernst on December 4th.

>> Wexler: If it's a Republican, a victims rights group, and if it's a Democrat, a civil rights group, like the NAACP, and work that angle first.

>> Young woman #2: I'm calling Senator Chuck Schumer right now.

So we believe that he would be a good sponsor for the bill and he'd be a good way to introduce the bill into the Senate.

>> Young man: I got a meeting with Lacy Clay.

He's on the Government Oversight and Reform Committee and he's a part of the Congressional Black Caucus, which we've received support from.

>> Narrator: The students contacted many representatives with the hopes of actually meeting with some of them during a class trip to Washington, D.C., in December of 2017.

The goal was to gain as much support as possible for their bill.

>> Young woman: What do you think the results of this trip are going to be like?

>> Wexler: I expect our bill to be introduced in the Senate, to get to the agenda of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, and to inspire all of my students to run for public office once they're out of college.

>> Young woman: How many appointments do you have?

>> Young man: Four.

>> Samantha: The act basically aims to give closure to the families and victims of civil rights cold cases, and it will establish a review board to oversee these files and hopefully get them released to the public eye.

>> Wexler: All we're asking is let every day people access these files online through digital means and search and see what they can do with the information.

What's the significance?

Why do you want to get people in the state or in the district to call before we call?

Yeah.

>> Samantha: Well, all politics is local, so they're likely to respond to their constituents.

My favorite thing about the class is definitely how I could interact with people that I never thought I would interact with before.

So, like, the first time I made a phone call to a congressman, I was shaking.

I was so nervous.

>> Prarthana: I've always kind of been really interested in, like, civil rights.

I think this bill in particular is very important.

It's clear that racism is still prevalent in society today and we're still fighting for justice of these victims.

>> Ali: And it's a question of humanity as a whole that these people were humans, their own family members who went through this, a lot of them were killed.

There were a lot of hate crimes toward them.

This deserves some sort of justice.

It's a sense of security and relief to see that something's being done.

>> Wexler: I want them to learn firsthand what the legislative process is like on the ground, real world, not just the charts that you give them that show the stages.

If a high school class can do that, what could everyday Americans do?

What can I do later on in my life if I really feel that there's something that can be done to make something happen in the country?

>> Prarthana: And you think that people who lost their loved ones should know what happened to their people.

If I was one of those people, I'd want to know what happened to my family.

And I think it's important that we take this as an issue and we pass it, because it's something that I think it's our duty to do.

♪♪ >> Spiller: That's all for now.

We hope you enjoyed watching.

And we invite you to discover more by visiting our website, classroomcloseup.org, and search in the video library.

We'll be back with another episode next week.

So please join us again on "Classroom Close-up, New Jersey."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Lacey: Thank you so much.

>> Girl: You're welcome.