The “conscious efforts of ordinary people choosing to do extraordinary things” are being celebrated this week for the anniversary of the 1959 Theatre Boycott.

The landmark event against racial segregation in Bermuda is being marked with a “high-five” to commemorate its 55th anniversary, according to Imagine Bermuda activist Glenn Fubler.

“Whenever encountering a student of years K through 12 during the week, please be encouraged to take the opportunity to remind them that they are an important member of the Bermuda family, the human family,” Mr Fubler said.

He suggested members of the public, “in those circumstance that are appropriate and if all involved feel comfortable”, to consider doing the celebratory hand gesture with young people around the Island.

“This would be a reminder to students of their wonderfully unique humanity and the power of one to bring about peaceful change.”

Segregation was an institution in Bermuda’s social order, if not in law, and in the Island’s cinemas, black patrons were forced to take their seats downstairs.

Up until the summer of 1959, white viewers alone were permitted to use gallery seats.

Cinemas were picketed before that year, but on June 15 the boycott got underway in earnest with the intention of “overturning formal segregation, a system based on the denial of the essential humanity of all”, Mr Fubler said, adding: “That success was achieved peacefully in two short weeks.”

The campaign has recruited volunteers to speak with schoolchildren, who will ride the morning school buses this week, “joining the students and having informal conversations with them”.

“These volunteers will not only point out how we all have benefited from those who have made history but remind these young people that as students, they are currently helping to fashion a future for a better Bermuda, a better world.”

After speaking with volunteers from the western half of the Island, The Royal Gazette talked this week with the eastern contingent, including lawyer Elizabeth Christopher.

“It’s important to remember it, so that young people don’t take all the various privileges that we have right now for granted,” Ms Christopher said.

“It was not that long ago. There are people who experienced it still around, and in our minds we need to understand why some people feel the way that they do.”

Ms Christopher noted that although she was born after the boycott, the vestiges of racial segregation persisted in some cinemas.

“When I was young in the early 1970s, there was an informal segregation,” she said. “It was still like that when I was a child.”

Former Premier David Saul said that as a former teacher and Permanent Secretary of Education, “education is in my blood”.

“With that in mind, I will be glad to hop on the bus and listen to the students,” Dr Saul said. “I would have loved, when I was 15, for someone to ask me about the next five years of my life.”

One of the suggestions for the venture is for volunteers to connect with young people on how they view their own futures.

“I grew up in what’s called the Back of Town, and as a teenager in that period of time, I was at the Theatre Boycotts, just as a gawking bystander, though I knew where my sympathies were,” Dr Saul recalled.

“I found it annoying to go to the movies, and my buddies from around the area would have to sit downstairs. I used to sit down with them. I remember how absolutely, pointlessly stupid that rule, rather than a law, was.

“You don’t have to be liberal. You just have to be a conscientious, thinking human being — even in those days. It just took some people to say that the emperor had no clothes, and everyone realised that the emperor was indeed naked.”

Former Postmaster General Gary Phillips, who will join students on the bus this Friday, said he’d been “honoured and thrilled” to be invited to join in.

“I will share my experience as a young man of 15, with my parents explaining to me why we weren’t going in to the theatre,” Mr Phillips said.

“As a young person who did not grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth, I do know a lot about making sacrifices from personal experience — not so much from my experience, but in the knowledge that others have made enormous sacrifices for me and others.”

Asked if the indignities of segregation had angered him at the time, Mr Phillips said: “Anger is such wasted energy. Anger, for me, does not solve issues. You have to use your resources to try and change things.”

Quoting the late US author Maya Angelou, he added: “What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”