Our theme for the month of October is “states.”

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.

Kamala Harris shared this quote from her mother with the world in May 2023. The video went viral ahead of the 2024 election. It was both lovingly remixed and harshly critiqued. I remember seeing Instagram comments calling it incoherent, proof she was unfit to lead the country.

I think it’s wise.

Among the many things I’m grateful to my parents for, I’m most grateful for their persistent commitment not only to fulfill my siblings’ and my curiosity about the world, but also to deliberately stretch us to see beyond our bubble—to understand the deeper and wider context behind everything immediately before us.

To give you a sense of the family I come from: throughout my childhood and adolescence, we attended services of varying lengths in dozens of churches across the country as well as our own city. I’ve played who-can-find-a-bench-first with my brother in countless museums of all kinds. When I was in second grade, my family left West Michigan and road-tripped across the country for my parents’ sabbatical year at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. We visited several national parks on our way, and my siblings and I attended an international school that year.

These tangible experiences (and more!) were formative in expanding my understanding of what it means to be a global citizen. They have, without a doubt, shaped the way I interact with the world.

Perhaps the most intentional learning experience my parents gave us was a Civil Rights tour they planned during spring break of my sophomore year of high school. We traveled through Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, Alabama. We visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, the 16th Street Baptist Church, went to church at the Cathedral Church of the Advent, walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, and visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. We spent the middle of the week in Gulf Shores, vacationing with our high school track friends, before continuing our tour through Jackson and Memphis to see Medgar Evers’ Home Museum, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, and the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.

When my dad first suggested the trip, I’m sure I rolled my eyes—why did every family trip have to be so educational? But by the time we made our first few stops, I had become a strong advocate that every family in America should follow suit.

The most memorable part of the trip, for me, was an encounter on the streets of Birmingham.

It’s been eight years now, so I hope you’ll forgive any forgotten details. We were looking for the start of a self-guided walking tour when a man who called himself Red stopped us. He worked for the Department of Public Works, had lived in Birmingham his whole life, and—if my memory is right—was about seventy then, born in the 1950s. Before we knew it, he had started giving us his own version of the walking tour.

Red told us about growing up Black in Birmingham: which streets were safe to walk, where the white barbershop stood and where the weathered Black barbershop had been. He described the Children’s March of 1963, when kids his age walked straight out of school and into the park to protest segregation—some carrying toothbrushes, prepared for the likelihood of arrest. They were met with fire hoses, the kind whose force can tear brick from walls, and with police dogs trained to bite. Hundreds of children were arrested that day. And Red remembered it.

Red led us toward a deserted alley just a few blocks away. The sight was striking: there sat one of the tanks used by the perpetrators who hosed down the protesting children. Not preserved behind glass in a Civil Rights museum, not taken away—just abandoned in a vacant alley, as if the march had happened yesterday. I have no idea if it’s still there, or if it was actually used that day in 1963, but that image is burned into my memory. It reminds me how recent the events in our American history books really are.

I remember coming back home to my American History class after spring break. We were writing some sort of response paper to the Civil Rights content we had covered over the past several weeks. I was peer reviewing a classmate’s paper. After returning from such an eye-opening trip, it was jarring to read his perspective—that none of what we had learned had any relevance to America today, that race-based discrimination and white privilege didn’t exist.

I had to remind myself that learning doesn’t happen overnight—that, just as we exist within the greater context of our country, we also exist in the context of our families. Growing up white in the middle-class suburbs of West Michigan, it’s easy to turn your eyes away from the history that shapes the present circumstances of our country. Many people don’t have the privilege of having parents like mine, who took the time to engage these conversations and encourage us to grow in curiosity and love. He probably didn’t. I can only hope that he’s finding his way on his own.

As I reflect on all this—as a weary person aching for renewal—I’m convinced that we must live with keen attention to the world around us. To move through life with blinders on is selfish—it assumes our own importance above all else. That kind of living has fueled the political divides in our country, both in the past and today. In such a time as this, we must carry ourselves with humility, keep a listening ear, and remain open to voices beyond our own.

Madeline Witvliet

Madeline Witvliet (’25) graduated from Calvin with a degree in English. She can be found in coffee shops in Eastown, exploring Michigan’s state parks, or singing with Calvin’s Alumni Choir. Madeline enjoys spending time outdoors, crafting, and cooking Mediterranean-inspired meals.