CHAMBERSBURG - Sitting in the Capitol Theatre balcony Tuesday morning, local students learned what it would have been like to live in an era of institutionalized racial inequality.
Peering up at them from the stage, the slave abolitionist "John Brown" said they were there because it is where their great-grandparents would have had to sit in their day.
But since it's 2013, he invited them down to the main seating area.
Though they sat apart from the audience for only a brief time, the minority students grasped the concept being taught at Kids Learning After School program's 10th annual Diversity Day.
Alma Guerrero and Angela Del Aguila, both of whom will be sixth graders next school year, said later that they would feel sad to have to sit in a separate area from most people.
"It wouldn't be fair to all of us," Aguila said.
"I don't know why people would do that because we're different," Guerrero added.
Feeling the segregation they would have felt in a different time was paired with an assignment to share their perceptions of diversity. Taking the stage first was a group of third- and fourth-graders. Holding up posters drawn to demonstrate their point, together they said, "It doesn't matter what others say because you're perfect the way you are."
Representatives from small groups of fifth- and sixth-grade students stood on stage next, to present their group's poster and message. A few of them were "The colors are different but they are still the same," "A life wouldn't be a life without differences" and "Many different pieces make a world."
The students stood in the recent footsteps of former President Abraham Lincoln and former U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, played by local actor Andrew Stoner and Stevens impersonator Ross Hetrick.
The two men talked about how the civil rights battle carried on, even though their fight to end slavery was successful.
Hetrick said later that he hopes the children take away another lesson, too.
"I think it's very important to increase (Stevens') visibility, to children particularly, so they know what an important person lived here, in this area, and had an important facility, Caledonia Ironworks (in Fayetteville)."
This year's Diversity Day took place on the same day when in 1868 the Stevens-powered 14th Amendment was ratified and put into law the principle that "all men are created equal," according to an email Hetrick sent to Public Opinion.
KLAS provides after-school programming to Chambersburg Area School District students during the school year. Students who participated in Diversity Day are part of KLAS's summer session. The program's director, James Wolfson, portrayed Brown.
Amber South can be reached at email@example.com and 262-4771.