In 1965 this “sure” feeling carried me away from the safety of California to the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South.  There was no looking back, no second guessing myself.  I was going.

And the idea of “going” was wonderful.  There were several levels of “going,”  One was that I was going to do something I thought life affirmning – registering black voters.  Another, I was about to travel across the country to places I had never been, to meet people I had never met and to see history being made.  I’d wake up each morning wondering – what will it be like there?  And this was my first trip alone away from home.

The excitement of going sustained me when  I allowed myself to wander into considering consequences.  Like so many other Americans, I had watched the violence of the Civil Rights Movement on television.  I knew about burning crosses and lynchings.  I’d seen police assault children with tear gas, batons, cattle prods, and fire hoses.  In Selma demonstrators were ridden down by police on horses.  I knew civil rights workers had been killed. That’s why I didn’t allow myself to think about the dreadful things very often.

I had the sense that I had to go and I did.