By 1968, Citizenship Schools had helped move tens of thousands of Black voters onto the voter rolls, and most of the leaders of the civil rights movement had been trained by Septima, Bernice, or other Highlander teachers. And this momentum, this ever-rising tide of Black voters? The people intent on preserving white supremacy and the status quo of the South just couldn’t handle it. They stepped up the moral panic rhetoric. The FBI and the state of Tennessee created reports that were picked up by news stations around the country that painted Highlander as a hotbed of communism. They revoked
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