By Anna Yang '23

Notre Dame’s Facing History and Ourselves Student Leadership Group (SLG) recently headed to Castilleja School in Palo Alto to attend a cross-school meet up of other similar leadership groups from Bay Area schools, including from Castilleja, Arise High School and James Logan High School. Students had the opportunity to hear from keynote speaker Gayle “Asali” Dickson, the only female artist for the Black Panther Party's newspaper. Ms. Dickson also visited Notre Dame in February as one of the Black History Month Assembly speakers. At the conference, students also learned about the disability rights movement and solidarity in activism through reading and discussing excerpts from Judith Heumann’s book Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist.

“I loved hearing from Ms. Dickson for the second time. She was very inspiring! Additionally, the disability rights movement was an issue that I was not very familiar with before, so it was amazing to learn more about its history through Judy Heumann’s words,” said Tien Nguyen ’23, a three-year member of the leadership group. “I’m usually not the type to speak first in conversation. However, I was able to step out of my comfort zone and have meaningful discussions with so many amazing students from diverse backgrounds.”

This was the second field trip the ND Facing History SLG took this school year, the first being last November at James Logan High School. We look forward to hearing more in the future!