On Jan. 29, 2025, USC Athletics hosted the “Witness for the Future: Student-Athletes as Agents of Change” panel at Galen Center. During the panel, USC student-athletes and staff members reflected on last year’s trips to Washington D.C., Krakow, Poland and Selma and Montgomery, Ala.
Twenty USC student-athletes and 10 staff members traveled to Washington D.C. and Krakow, Poland, in the summer of 2024 to get a better understanding of antisemitism, the Holocaust and the history of hate in America. While in Washington D.C., the group visited sites such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Lincoln Memorial and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. After three days in DC, they journeyed to Poland, where they met a Holocaust survivor, visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum and more.
USC track & field student-athlete Matteo Mitchell, who is Jewish and had family killed in the Holocaust, located his family members in Auschwitz-Birkenau’s “Book of Names.”
“Obviously being Jewish, I know a lot about the Holocaust, but you don’t understand the scale until you’re actually there,” said Mitchell. “This place is literally bigger than USC’s campus. It’s evil. Being able to connect with that part of my family history was life-changing for me.”
USC’s group celebrated the lives of the Jewish people by participating in a pierogi-making workshop and visiting historic sites in Krakow such as Old Town and the Jewish Quarter.
“They had their joys, their passions, their traditions just like we do,” said USC track & field student-athlete Kennie Arriola. “I think it’s really powerful to be intentional about seeing the humanity in others. It would be so much harder to hate others if we see them as people that are similar to us.”
While in Poland, USC football cornerback Prophet Brown learned about how the perpetrators of the Holocaust took practices from slavery in the United States.
“That really opened my eyes to the fact that this has happened to my people before,” he said. “It’s not about just hate to one specific group, it’s about hate to humans as a whole. Seeing it in that lens gives you an understanding that it’s not just history, it’s forever.”
USC student-athletes and staff gained a better understanding of hate in America and the civil rights movement when they attended the third annual “Big Life Series: Selma to Montgomery” in July 2024. The event began with a community service project supplying backpacks and school supplies to local students. Attendees then took part in a walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which was the site of the 1965 Bloody Sunday March (a peaceful protest against police violence, which was met with more violence from Alabama state troopers). The three-day event concluded with a visit to the Legacy Museum.
“Being in class and learning about it is a different feeling than actually being there,” said USC football linebacker Garrison Madden. “You felt the heaviness in the air. Just being there, it allowed me to have an appreciation for the sacrifices that they made to be where we are today. A lot of progress has been made, but there’s still a long way to go with the civil rights movement and with racism.”
The educational trips to Alabama, Washington D.C. and Poland helped USC student-athletes and staff identify hate in all its forms and develop strategies to combat it. They came home with motivation to make positive change in the world and a new perspective on history, the present day and the future.
“I’m a Black girl from the South, who went to an all-Black high school in an all-Black city,” said USC track & field student-athlete Jalaysiya Smith. “I was granted the opportunity to come to USC where I have met these wonderful student-athletes and staff. I realized that I’m my ancestors’ wildest dream.”
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