King’s memory of Mother Pollard saying “My feet is real tired” during the bus boycott and then, jumping ahead five years, pointed out that the contemporary Freedom Rider was not “an elderly woman whose grammar is uncertain” but students who were “college-bred, Ivy League clad, youthful, articulate, and resolute.” Many readers doubtless puzzled over this as an odd point to single out, and perhaps a snobbish one besides. But King did not wish merely to marshal credentials for himself or his cause—he wanted desperately to communicate how much those protesters were willing to sacrifice. Unlike
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