The 1949 story involved a woman who unjustly accused four young black men of rape. The case led to a race riot, multiple murders, two trials (including a Supreme Court reversal), and the assassination of a well-known civil rights leader and his wife.

But this column is less about the film or the facts of the case, and instead about my experiences as a white facilitator in black spaces, or more broadly, as a white person in black spaces.

This wasn’t the first time I have facilitated a conversation about race, but this particular experience has stayed with me. Perhaps it’s because the film itself actually depicted some of the atrocities visited upon the black defendants by law enforcement.

Miles Mulrain Jr., a community activist and speaker on the panel, said it is one thing to read about this history in a book, but it is another for young people to watch images of it through film.  While watching the film, the audience – almost exclusively black – audibly reacted to the harsher scenes. I wonder, as a white person who has studied race and who has friends and family who are black, if I am left to merely perceive our American racial history as one reads it in a book, whereas to a person of color this history is portrayed in their mind’s eye with the painful vibrancy of a live action film?

Can a white person ever fully understand what it is like to be black in America? I don’t think so.

Can a white person ever fully understand what it is like to be black in America? I don’t think so.

So where does that leave us? In this era of racial divide, how do we bridge the gap?

Here’s the hard part. Black folks do not bear the burden of creating the bridge. They cannot, as it is already hard enough to be black in America without having to educate white folks along the way. Merely existing as a black person here is enough work. Novelist and social critic James Baldwin said that “To be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.�

There are two Americas: In one you can get arrested for sitting in a coffee shop or for having a barbecue at a park. In the other America, the one I live in, people are given the benefit of the doubt, and there’s virtually no reason to think I can’t get a key to the coffee shop bathroom or cook my food in a park. Because it’s virtually inconceivable for white folks to have police called on them for merely existing, and because white people are able to surround themselves in white bubbles, it’s like we white people are reading the book of racial history and racial current events, while our black countrymen are watching the film, or harder yet, starring in the film.

So how do we white people put the metaphorical book down and get to the point of feeling it like you would with a film, and get closer to breathing this history instead of just catching it peripherally from the corner of our eye?

First, white people would be wise to study up on the topic of race since our nation’s school systems do an inadequate job on the topic.

I recommend White Fragility by Robin Diangelo. You could read The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson for a deep dive into Jim Crow and the Great Migration. And, of course, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is the gold standard. For film I recommend 13^th or videos by anti-racism activist Tim Wise. Whether you agree with the points made you will learn something.

After getting some background, then go into places where you are one of few white people. Visit a black church. Join a traditionally black student organization. Find a Rotary chapter or Lions Club that is predominantly black. Check out the Parramore Farmers Market on the west side of Orlando’s downtown.

See what it feels like to be the representative voice of your race, realizing that black folks do that all the time.

Which brings me to my final point. On Aug. 26, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ and Valencia College will open a joint campus in the Parramore community, which is not sure yet how it will fit into this collegiate space. I challenge the downtown campus to welcome and come to know the people of Parramore.

How will the campus be a good neighbor? How will administrators, faculty, staff and students bridge the racial divide?

Recall that a community existed before the campus showed up.

Cynthia Schmidt wrote this Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Forum when she was director of the university’s Center for Law and Policy in the Department of Legal Studies. She can be reached now at CynthiaSchmidtEsq@gmail.com.

The Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns presented by Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Communications & Marketing. A new column is posted each Wednesday at http://today.ucf.edu and then broadcast between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday on WÂ鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½-FM (89.9). The columns are the opinions of the writers, who serve on the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Forum panel of faculty members, staffers and students for a year.

We have the most rights when we are interacting with the government. We have fewer rights when we are in private spaces and dealing with a private employer. Following are some of the issues involved with the ongoing controversy of kneeling during national anthems, both at government events and on the sports fields.

And like any good professor teaching law I have more questions for you than answers.

First, some givens: Americans cannot be compelled by the government to stand for or state the Pledge of Allegiance. This is true, too, for little Americans in school. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1943 ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that because of the free-speech clause even children in public school have the right to refrain from saying the pledge. For speech to be free, it cannot be forced. So freedom to speak means freedom to not speak.

This ruling on the pledge makes sense apart from case law. What kind of Pledge of Allegiance would it be if it was a forced pledge? And what evidence of “liberty� (as in “liberty, and justice for all�) would there be if a person said this under threat of penalty? (Per the Florida Department of Education, students excused from the pledge by their parents may remain seated; they do not have to stand nor leave the room.) Yet in this discussion of the schoolchild I have placed the student in a public school. And we’ve established here that a person has greater rights when dealing with the government than with a private school or private employer.

A federal appeals court in 2013 (Swartz v. Isogna) held that a person has a First Amendment right to flip off a police officer. This is considered protected, political speech. And we learn in the U.S. Supreme Court case Cohen v. California that a person can wear a jacket with the words “F* the Draft� – to the courthouse, no less.

But I am confident none of us can say without consequence “Screw you� to the boss at work, wherever we work. The message to the police is political speech, and the other statement here is insubordination that contradicts the mission of the employment.

So, a question: If a football player takes a knee during the playing of the national anthem is this like a school student remaining seated for the pledge at a public school? Or is this closer to the office hypothetical where you’ve said something your employer does not approve of?

Can actions without words be speech? Is it a form of expressive conduct?

First we must look at whether taking a knee is even speech. Can actions without words be speech? Is it a form of expressive conduct? Yes, sometimes action sends a message and that can make it speech.

Let’s look at Texas v. Johnson. In 1989 the U.S Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag is protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The court noted that the Texas law allowed a flag to be burned if it was old and needed to be retired, but the same Texas law barred the burning of a flag if a citizen was doing so in protest. One action (flag burning) was provided for under state law if your intention was an approved one, but another flag burning resulted in a one-year jail sentence for Mr. Johnson, since he did this as a form of protest.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state may not mandate that citizens could do one act while thinking in one manner, and go to jail for the same act while having intentions the government does not favor. As a result, we have case law that says burning a flag is symbolic speech, and lawful speech.

So given that speech action can be a form of speech and some speech is protected, what can we establish about the football players? It gets even more complicated by way of their contract. Does their job start at kickoff? Have they contracted that the employer can regulate their life on and off the field, before kickoff as well as after the whistle? Where must the contract end? Could the contract dictate how they vote? Certainly not; that would be an unlawful contract. So we have contracts to consider but they are not without scrutiny.

Is it relevant to our analysis of government vs. private action that some stadiums were built with public financing, or that the NFL was given nonprofit status per the IRS code? To what degree does the U.S. government have a hand in professional football? What if instead of the NFL, this was a college football player? What if this was a state college, say here at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½?

For discussion, let’s presume this is entirely between a private employer and a citizen-employee (as opposed to a college student at a state school.) Can the employer interfere with the employee’s speech on a matter of politics?

Take it a step further: Could the employer tell the employee not to place a political bumper sticker on their car? Not to write a Bible verse such as John 3:16 under their eyes?

But are the football players endorsing a particular candidate while taking a knee?  Haven’t they said they are protesting police violence, and is that message constrained to a particular party?

So is this more of a belief, the belief in bodily autonomy, of personal agency, of safety, and coming back full circle, a request for liberty and justice for all?

Cynthia Schmidt is director of the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½â€™s Center for Law and Policy in the Department of Legal Studies. She can be reached at Cynthia.Schmidt@ucf.edu.

The Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns presented by Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Communications & Marketing. A new column is posted each Wednesday at /news/ and then broadcast between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday on WÂ鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½-FM (89.9). The columns are the opinions of the writers, who serve on the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Forum panel of faculty members, staffers and students for a year.

Their conversation touched on the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer, the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and the role students can play in community healing.

“The Missouri students saw a lot of civil turmoil after the shooting of Mike Brown,� said Cynthia Schmidt, director of the Center for Law and Policy in the College of Health and Public Affairs, who envisioned the forum with center staff member Danielle Malcolm.

“We wanted to give students from our local community an opportunity to talk with them, share their own experiences and perhaps start an ongoing dialog,� she said.

Schmidt and Malcolm worked with Lisa Early from the city of Orlando to identify a student from Jones High School to be a student leader at the forum. Senior Withney Simon, who participates in the city’s Parramore Kidz Zone initiative, agreed to the role.

They worked with Robyne Stevenson, interim director of the college’s Doctoral Program in Public Affairs and a former University of Missouri–Kansas City faculty member, to identify a partner high school and student leader from the Ferguson area.

They found a partner in Jennings High School, which includes students from both Jennings and Ferguson. Trevor Gillespie, also a senior, agree to serve as his high school’s student leader.

A week before the forum, Stevenson and Airick West, a member of the Kansas City, Mo., school board, worked with a group of students from each high school to prepare questions to ask at the forum. They also coached the student leaders on how to lead the conversation.

On April 21 the two groups of students met through video conference technology over pizza compliments of the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ center. After eating the student leaders took turns leading the conversation.

The Jones High School students wanted to know what keeps the Jennings High School students going and what they’re doing to uplift the community, Schmidt said. The Jennings students said their school raised money for businesses that burned down and that they want to help the community by leading by example.

The Jones students also asked the Jennings students how they would describe Mike Brown, who grew up in an impoverished area near Ferguson. According to Schmidt, one Jennings student who knew Mike Brown said, “He was a person trying to get out of here, just like we are.�

“The room was quiet for a bit after that answer,� Schmidt said.

Schmidt also reported: “A Jennings student asked the Jones students: Who is to blame for the shootings: African Americans, the cops or the politicians?” A Jones student said, ‘The blame should be shared because sometimes the black community fails to accept responsibility for when their own is messing up, but sometimes there is racism by the police.’â€�

West participated in the forum using Google Hangouts technology. He asked all the students, “Whose job is it to start something? What are the next steps?�

According to Schmidt, two Jones students responded with, “We should get involved instead of letting older people be the voice� and “Be accountable, man up.� A Jennings student said, “We should build relationships instead of judging.�

Schmidt said the students from both high schools agreed to participate in a second virtual forum at the beginning of the next school year.

For further information, contact Cynthia.Schmidt@ucf.edu.

A forum to celebrate the Constitution and the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will be sponsored Wednesday by the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½â€™s Office of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Legal Studies, Department of Political Science, Department of History, Lou Frey Institute, John C. Hitt Library and Student Government Association. The forum will focus on how different interpretations of the Constitution have changed over time and the effect it has on society.  

The event will be from 10 a.m. to noon at FAIRWINDS Alumni Center and is free to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ students, faculty and staff members. Former Ambassador William J. Hughes and Congressman Peter Torkildsen will address the topic, after which they will join a panel alongside Legal Studies faculty members James Beckman and Cynthia Schmidt to answer questions.

“We encourage the involvement of Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ students, as this is a wonderful opportunity for them to be a part of an event with such prestigious speakers,â€� said Juan Lugo of the Office of Undergraduate Studies.  

For more information about the Constitution Day event