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ARAPAHOE COUNTY - Senior Jordan Hall thought he'd learned a lot about Selma, Ala. in his history class.
"We just finished the Civil War unit last semester," Hall said.
He learned an even bigger lesson outside of the classroom when the first African-American Mayor of Selma, Mayor James Perkins, Jr., spoke to students at Arapahoe High School.
"It's saddening," Hall said. "Mostly just kind of a shame and it surprised me."
Hall was speaking of the blunt facts that Perkins, whose term ended in 2004, shared with the teens in his guest lecture. The stories show his hometown of Selma is still struggling with racism and segregation in everyday life.
"We're still going through a healing process," Perkins said of the city, which was the site of an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday.
On that day in 1965, hundreds of protestors were beaten and tear gassed by police in a march for the right to vote.
Perkins was only 12 years old at the time.
"[I] did not march on Bloody Sunday. My mother and father did not want me to go because we had heard that something was going to happen at that march," he said.
In the years since Bloody Sunday, Selma's country club remains segregated as do most classrooms and extra-curricular activities. They are facts that students in Colorado found hard to believe.
"I thought racism was a dead issue," Arapahoe High School sophomore Eric Louks said. "I didn't think there was any modern-day action on the topic."
Students from Selma who recently visited Colorado have a different perspective. They came to Denver because of an organization founded by a local man. That organization, The Freedom Foundation, is dedicated to achieving racial harmony in Selma. Its performance group, Random Acts of Theatre, is said to be the only truly integrated social group in the city.
"There's a world out there waiting for you [that] I'm not sure you're ready to experience," Perkins said to the teens in the crowd, urging them to educate themselves with information to combat the rhetoric of hate groups.
"The KKK (Ku Klux Klan) does not walk around with hoods on anymore," Perkins said to the teens. "I will tell you that those folks are spreading their tentacles across this country."
The visit by the former mayor has made students like Hall consider race relations outside of his own community.
"We should just open up our hearts and not be so judgmental," Hall said. "It's not just racism. It's who we are as a people and we need to love more and judge a little less."
For more information on The Freedom Foundation and Colorado efforts to help the people of Selma, log on to www.freedomfoundation.org.
(KUSA-TV © 2010 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)