Today’s Washington Post ran an inspiring, if bittersweet, story about the reunion of the 1960 high school graduates from Loudoun County, Virginia. You might say they held a belated Mix It Up at Lunch Day.
Superficially, it looked like a lot of 50-year reunions, with people sharing memories and pictures of grandkids. In an important way, though, it was different. This class of 1960 had graduated from two different high schools, one exclusively for white students, one designated for African Americans.
Their separation was enforced by law and upheld by longstanding custom. The barriers that arose from history were bridged at the reunion by a simple technique any Mix It Up organizer would recognize:
“Among the 40 people, about half were white, half black; place settings were arranged to put together people who didn't know each other.”
Here’s an idea for your Mix It Up at Lunch Day 2010: Share the Washington Post story with your students before the day and ask them, when they sit at lunch with someone they don’t know, to talk about what they will say to each other when they meet again in 50 years. In 2060 what do they expect they will have had in common?
We suspect there are hundreds of ways to use this story. Why not share your ideas?
Costello is the director of Teaching Tolerance.
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