In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Gann community gathered on Tuesday for an all-school assembly, facilitated by educational non-profit Facing History & Ourselves. Students and faculty welcomed Lew Zuchman and Luvaghn Brown, who spoke openly about their experiences as Freedom Riders during the Civil Rights Movement.
The Freedom Riders were a racially integrated group of young activists who, in 1961, traveled by interstate bus through the segregated South to challenge laws that violated Supreme Court rulings banning segregation in public transportation—fully aware that they would face arrest and violence for doing so.
Lew grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust within an Eastern-European Jewish enclave in Forest Hills, New York. His family’s history profoundly shaped his moral outlook, and his conviction that “remaining silent” in the face of injustice was not an option. Notably, nearly half of the white Freedom Riders were Jewish, many motivated by the legacy of the Holocaust and a deep sense of ethical responsibility.
Lew’s path intersected with Luvaghn’s during the turbulent summer of 1961 in segregated Jackson, Mississippi, where the two formed a lifelong friendship. Luvaghn described a working-class childhood marked by fear, racism, and instability. He left home at 16 and at times slept in a graveyard—remarking that “ghosts didn’t scare” him, but life as a Black man in the Jim Crow South did. Despite constant threats of violence, he chose to put himself in even greater danger by joining the movement.
While Gann students have studied the Civil Rights Movement in books, this conversation brought history into vivid focus. Lew and Luvaghn spoke candidly about being beaten, jailed, and terrorized—revealing the human cost behind the iconic images students know. They also reflected on how those same moral challenges persist today, discussing the recent antisemitic arson attack on Congregation Beth Israel, Jackson’s only synagogue. The building had previously been targeted by a Ku Klux Klan bombing in 1967 and was again attacked on January 10, 2026—a stark reminder that the hatred confronted during the Civil Rights era is not confined to the past.
Together, Lew’s and Luvaghn’s stories made clear that the challenges they faced as young activists—antisemitism, racism, and the question of whether to act or remain silent—are ones we still face in this generation. Gann students and faculty were grateful to learn from these firsthand accounts, hearing history directly from those who helped shape it.
