Checking out streets around C-U from youth violence to school integration

Community members and officials highlight issues youth face like gun violence, while others honor an educator through a street unveiling and two classmates reflect on school integration decades later.

Champaign County officials, program leaders and youth met Wednesday afternoon to discuss the issues troubling young people. Panelists, including three young men who were invited to share their experience, discussed youth crime, gun violence and programs aimed at supporting young people. Over the summer, gun violence claimed the lives of three boys under the age of 17. 

Honorary Dean Clarence Shelley Way, unveiled Sept. 14, memorializes a man who spent 50 years working to foster a learning community where everyone, regardless of background, could strive for excellence. A section of John Street, located between 6th Street and Wright Street, received this honorary designation through a Champaign program that commemorates figures who left an impact on the city.

Angela Patterson and Laura Hastings were both in kindergarteners in 1966, when a group of parents known as the Ellis Drive Six pushed Urbana to integrate its elementary schools.  Few schools budged in the decade after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned racial segregation in public schools with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. It took years for new laws, court cases and federal funding incentives to push districts to change. Six decades later, many students from that first integrated class are still friends — including Laura and Angela.

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GUESTS: 

Trayvon Gibson

• Community member at the Champaign County Community Coalition meeting.

Dana Vickers Shelley

• Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union

Angela Patterson and Laura Hastings

• Former students in Urbana’s first integrated elementary school