Jalen Jenkins and his George Mason basketball teammates experienced Monday a Martin Luther King Day they will remember for a long time.
   After a spirited 8am practice – highlighted by Kam Murrell's buzzer beating three-pointer that gave his team a victory in a practice closing mini scrimmage – the team showered, grabbed box lunches and hopped on a bus to DC. Coach Dave Paulsen, through the auspices of Rep. Gerry Connolly and staff, had secured one of the toughest tickets in town – admission to the recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture.
     For the next four hours or so, the players, coaches and support staff toured the building that opened in September, chronicle the African-American journey from slavery to freedom and contains more than 3,000 artifacts.
   "The information they provided was really eye opening," said Jenkins, a fifth-year senior. "It helps you realize how much people have had to overcome – the injustice, the inequality – and the fact that there are people fighting for the same causes to this day. It's just really eye opening. And it humbles you.
   "Coming off practice, we could have been sleepy and maybe not retained a lot of information. Instead, we were in there for four hours, taking pictures and having heart-to-heart conversations. It was a great experience. To go on MLK Day made it even greater."
   The exhibit that resonated the most with Jenkins was the casket of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, who in 1955 was beaten to death while visiting relatives in Mississippi for supposedly having "flirted" with a white woman. The woman's husband and half-brother were acquitted by an all-white male jury but later admitted to the murder, though they were immune to further prosecution because of double jeopardy.
    Till's mother, Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, decided to have an open casket, displaying her son's disfigured face and body to graphically show how brutally he was beaten. There suiting publicity and outrage helped spark the Civil Rights movement.
   Jenkins, aware of Till before the museum visit, was captivated by the exhibit, which contains pictures, a short documentary and interviews with Till's mother.
    "You get to see the courage she had to leave the casket open so everybody could see the violence and hatred that lived within certain people," Jenkins said. "You get to see how courageous people were and how they had to push for equality and justice across America. It took one courageous woman to step up and say, 'This is what's going on.' Sometimes all you need is one person to step up. A simple action can become contagious."
   The Tills exhibit also was a highlight for others on the visit. Freshman Justin Kier had never heard of the Till. Neither had Paulsen, who was a Phi Betta Kappa U.S. Diplomatic History major at Williams and has a Masters from Michigan in History.
   "There were a lot of things every one of us didn't know," Paulsen said. "Like I can't believe I had not heard of Emmett Till. That exhibit was very powerful, just really striking."
   For Daniel Relvao, a redshirt freshman center from Portugal, the museum was a crash course. "It was incredible to see what the African American community has been through," he said about slavery.
   The sports exhibit, which includes memorabilia such as one of Jackie Robinson's bats, was universally popular with the team. At about the same time as the team was touring, Barack Obama, the first African American president of the U.S., was welcoming the World Series champion Chicago Cubs to the White House, a short walk from the museum.
   In his remarks to the Cubs, Obama, a life-long hoop junkie, spoke of the importance of sports in U.S. history as a unifying force: "There's a direct line between Jackie Robinson and me standing here. … Sometimes it's not enough just to change laws. You've got to change hearts. And sports has a way of sometimes changing hearts in a way that politics or business doesn't."
   Jenkins experienced a lot of emotions during Monday's museum visit and afterwards. "The coolest part was when we rejoined afterward and all the discussions that were heart-felt and eye opening," he said. "It allowed us to realize we get to play the game we love, get a free education and do all these things because of Martin Luther King, Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks. It's amazing.
   "They paved the way for what we have. To go to the museum on MLK Day was great. For coach to consider something like that and to go out of his way to make it happen, well, it just shows a lot about him."