Everybody's Got Pictures...

but not me.... For the second time in two years, I have the privilege to talk to my heroes. Real people telling real stories of organizing scared people living in the South to vote. These organizers never left anyone behind; once Charles McLaurin walked into a town for the first time to begin organizing the people there, he was determined to work until the work was done and Medgar Evers' dream was realized. Today his work continues but in a different form. His time is spent talking to students, sharing his life and laying it all down for us to pick up and organize in our communities, working for the change needed today.

The work for the Civil Rights veterans always included, every day--every waking moment, the fear of death. In Mississippi, examples of raw courage are embodied in known figures such as Medgar Evers but also in those organizers and civil rights workers who do not have a street named after them but are every bit the heroes as the martyr from Jackson. We consider the motivation for the actions of those workers, even white students who journeyed away from the comfort of their homes to the gritty South to register voters. We on this trip wonder why the volunteers would continue to work even after the disappearance of the three workers as Freedom Summer 1964. How could one do the work of the Civil Rights Movement when, on any given day, any given worker could be targeted for a savage example of Southern white hatred?

The only possible answer I can provide is that the veterans, the tireless workers of the Movement possessed the DREAM. They did the work to achieve Medgar's Dream. They were active in pursuing voters to gain political and, ultimately, economic power in Missississppi. The testimony of their actions in the face of very tangible fear demonstrate their understanding that they are just the worker, a body, a resource. Southern Hate can kill the body but IT CANNOT KILL THE DREAM.

They dream is still not dead. There is a new Movement in the air...