Dear John Lewis

Pages 25-80 covered a lot of the logistical challenges of organizing the civil rights movement; the disagreements between different organizations, distrust of the LBJ after Kenedy was assassinated, and disagreements within the SNCC. During this time the fight for voting rights was blazing on and violence and killings were at a high, especially at the hands of local police who were responsible for a lot of the beatings and violence directed at protestors. Organizers were attempting to get more push behind equal voting rights by introducing the Freedom vote, which was a mock vote hosted by the SNCC that allowed African Americans to vote freely and without discrimination that took from in literacy tests and hostile test examiners, as well as the threat of retaliation as their name would be posted publicly.

I thought that this part of the book was much more compelling than the first 25 pages because it covered more of what mattered and demonstrated the importance of equal voting rights. I specifically liked how the book showed the impact of John F. Kennedy’s assassination specifically on the civil rights movement leaders. Overall it made me feel a little upset just from the amount of injustice and violence that directed at African Americans at the time.

I wonder why you showed what you did. I thought that the focus on the logistics and leadership of the civil rights movement was interesting as that’s an aspect of the civil rights movement I have never really seen before.

I don’t know what solution there needs to be as far as voting rights for all today, at least based on race. I think that voting today has a ton of issues. Whether it is insecurity or inconsistency due to laws being created on the state level instead of federal. I don’t know of any other issues that are solely based on race discrimination. I think that there are other things that are discriminatory that affect voting by proxy.

Sincerely Zac