“This is why getting people out to vote is so important to me,” I say quietly. “We shouldn’t still be dealing with this. We never should’ve had to deal with this. Too many people risked their lives and—I’ll never forget the first time I heard about the four girls in Birmingham. I was in fifth grade…the youngest was the same age as me when she died. Or the Freedom Summer murders. I didn’t understand how anyone could hate Black people so much just because we were Black.” I take a deep breath. “But that’s when I learned about people like Bayard Rustin and Diane Nash and Stokely Carmichael and
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