To learn that you were heavily demonstrative in the Civil Rights Movement alongside Martin Luther King was astounding. The idea to march came with you saying you would march as an individual if you had to, you were going to march. You saw innocent lives being taken in the fight for the right to vote, black lives. Lines would extend long as ever at the courthouses for registration and it would never move. In the state of Alabama, only
2.1 % of African Americans were registered to vote, thousands were falsely ruled as illiterate at registration. Many of which were African Americans in professions as doctors, teachers, businessmen who were educated individuals being purposefully denied voting rights.
You held demonstrations at courthouses demanding voting rights with people forming long lines demanding their rights. Then came officials saying the demonstration was unlawful and there you witnessed a young man's life taken by a gun. A young man who was only guilty of joining a peaceful demonstration asking for his voting rights. A statement needed to be made to all of America that this was not okay and that we were citizens. You gathered 600 black and brown people with Martin Luther King to march 50 miles to Montgomery. 50 MILES were walked by men, women, and children. Intervention with Alabama police brought on violence to an otherwise peaceful march. Hundreds were beaten, you were beaten and had to be sent to the Samaritan Hospital. Such attacks never caused you to suspend your efforts in wanting to see a changed world.
Over the course of the movement, you recalled being arrested forty times. It takes a special kind of person to keep a strong will in their beliefs when they are constantly facing terrible consequences. Having been sent to jail so many times drew you to the point where before you left to join a demonstration you would pack a bookbag with a book to read in jail, an apple, and orange, as well as a toothbrush. You were doting on facing punishment for fighting the oppressive system not just in Alabama but all of the United States.
I try to think of when I myself rose to a challenge in my life, and I have had aplenty, however, to take it to the level of sacrifice that you did leaves me humbled. Your determination is impermissible. Your level of fearlessness is much to comprehend. You carry with you so much history and the beauty of what it means to fight. To fight is to declare within your whole being that you want a resolution. We need a difference! We need something to be different! It is one thing to acknowledge the need for change and it is another to dedicate your whole life to it. You are the epitome of a hero.
If it had not been for you organizing countless marches and your unmoving vision, the 1965 Voting Rights Act would have never come to creation. Our brothers and sisters would not be in office and we would never have had our first black president.
You have helped to change so much during the Civil Rights Movement for us today, however, we still have so much farther to go. Farther to go with your headstrong attitude towards a future of equality and freedom.
"If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it." - John Lewis
Sincerely,
Kayla Mary Jane