“They were saying ‘I want to be a doctor.’ ‘I want to be a lawyer.’ “Īnd many of them did become doctors and lawyers.
“When we’d finish playing ball, we’d sit down on the waterfront and we’d start talking,” Thomas remembered. Though, the most important thing Thomas took away as a camper was that Atwater is a place that brings Black kids together to support each other’s dreams. “The whole thing.” After campers arrive from Springfield by bus, Urban League of Springfield President Henry Thomas III gives the words of encouragement to do anything they wish and to enjoy themselves while they are at Camp Atwater. “We used to have some dynamite discussions about Civil Rights, the movement, Black power,” he said. Thomas said one camp mother gave him a vinyl record of Malcom X speeches. He said going to the camp as a teen fueled his fight for justice.
He was a student activist in the 1960s as well as a camper at Atwater. He said Black kids are policed enough as it is. “When you think about where the kids have been for the last year - emotionally, psychologically - it’s been kinda rough,” he said. Henry Thomas III, who heads the Springfield Urban League, which manages the camp, said the camp is especially needed after the trauma of 2020 - when Black kids dealt with both the isolation of the pandemic and the racist injustices of last year. Alaysia Mondon, 14, baits her hook with a worm while fishing on Lake Lashaway. “I mean, we’re obviously all different in our own ways,” said Alaysia Mondon, 14. (Jesse Cota/WBUR)Īuston’s friend on the basketball court said Camp Atwater also gives them the opportunity to explore their individuality.
#Urban league full#
Full of rich, white people.’ But it’s nice to have somewhere you can go and trust people, and be around your own people.” A hot meal of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and salad is prepared for campers to enjoy while they are at the camp. “When you think of different, you think ‘Oh, Massachusetts. “There’s not much representation of Black people in Massachusetts,” said Olivia Auston, 16, as she played with a fellow camper on the basketball court. But many campers and organizers say Atwater is still needed today, a century later. The camp was created at a time when other summer camps were closed to Black children. But this is the Camp Atwater, founded 100 years ago as one of the first - if not the first - summer camps in America specifically for Black kids.
It sounds like it could be any summer camp. On the shores of Lake Lashaway in central Massachusetts this summer, you’re likely to find kids frolicking in the sun, making pottery, fishing or talking to friends. Chaun’cee Smith and Josiah Lopez fish off a dock in Lake Lashaway at Camp Atwater in North Brookville.