By Sonya Hollins, editor
Living in the city of Kalamazoo it’s not hard to pass along train tracks at one point or another throughout the day. As the train whistle blows and signal arms lower to stop traffic we often wonder, ‘where are the people on the train going?’ Historians too know that Kalamazoo was along the route of the Underground Railroad during the 1800s as well.
Girls of the Merze Tate Travel Club experienced a Mystery Train Ride in May to Battle Creek for excitement and history. Their excursion was recently featured by reporter Kyle Norris of NPR Radio. http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/0/7/1664495/Education/Merze.Tate.Travel.Club.Opens.Doors
Nationally the story ran on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. Listen to this version at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128443452
For most of the girls, the train ride was their first as they headed to Battle Creek to learn of the history of the Underground Railroad. Many knew of Battle Creek as well, not a 20-minute drive from their home, but did not know its history.
“I’ve gone there to the mall,” said Tori Zackery, a charter member of the Merze Tate Travel Club. The high school freshman is no stranger to travel, however learned much about Sojourner Truth, the Kellogg brothers and Erastus Hussey (Underground Railroad conductor) through historian Velma Clay of Battle Creek who traveled along with the group as well.
To Zoe Emons, the train ride was one she said she will never forget.
“It felt like I was going backwards,” she said as she changed seats to sit in a direction the train was headed.
Destiny Buchannan also was amazed on her first train ride along with her sisters. “There’s my school,” she noticed as the train pulled along through Comstock where she attend elementary school.
The more than 20 students and chaperones learned much during the travels, with chaperon and former Kalamazoo Public School teacher Bette Boulding, seeing an old wood-burning stove in the Kimball House Museum in Battle Creek. “I remember my grandmother cooking on one of these,” she said.
All along the journey students were interviewed by Norris about their experiences in the group and the train ride. The Merze Tate Travel Club formed in 2008 to expose young girls to new people and places in their community and their world. The group began with a $1,000 grant from the Kalamazoo Community Foundation with the help of fiduciary agent Great Minds of Tomorrow, Inc., a Kalamazoo-based tutoring center operated by retired teacher Nora Curtis.
The group has had lunch with such inspirational women as Dr. Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, the first woman and African American president of Kalamazoo College; Betty Lee Ongley, president of the Ladies Library Association and first woman mayor of Michigan (Portage). The girls focus on photography, writing and videography as they meet everyone from Tuskegee Airmen in Detroit to international administrators of Stryker Instruments.
Sonya Hollins formed The Merze Tate Travel Club after the example of one Tate herself organized at Crispus Attuck High School in Indianapolis, Ind. in the 1930s. Tate, a 1927 graduate of Western Michigan University and Michigan Woman’s Hall of Fame honoree also went on to become the first African American to graduate from Oxford University, the first African American to earn a PhD in political science from Cambridge University among many other firsts. She retired from Howard University as a history professor after decades of traveling the world as an author and ambassador for the State Department.
Over the past two years the Merze Tate Travel Club has exposed young women to people, places and opportunities around them. Dozens of local community businesses have helped such as B&W Charters along with dedicated volunteers such as Pat Bates, Karol Ford and Jaye Johnson.
*Note: Sonya Hollins, editor of Community Voices also is writing a book on the life of Merze Tate planned for release in March 2011.
