An Informal Book Review – His Truth is Marching On – John Lewis and the Power of Hope – Jon Meacham – Random House, New York, 2020
First Things First – The Acquisition – the Gift – of this Book
John Lewis has had a strong, significant, and lasting influence upon my life for about a half-century before I even knew his name. I had only become familiar with the name, John Lewis, when he spoke in Congress in support of the impeachment of then President Trump in December 2019, and then through the few words of his informal speech in March 2020, at the beginning of the march in Selma commemorating the 55th anniversary of the March across the Edmund Pettus Bridge which took place in March 1965 – the march in which, from the book, Lewis believed he was going to die when the police and Alabama state troopers, some mounted on horses, attacked the peaceful gathering.
I then became inspired by John Lewis’s words spoken at these two events, especially by two of his statements, his preachings – for as I learned through the book, his whole life, the entirety of his being, was founded upon and breathed though his deeply abiding faith – “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.” and “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
(To view videos of the above referenced speeches, please use the following links: John Lewis on impeachment: ‘Be on the right side of history’ (washingtonpost.com) December 18, 2019 & Representative John Lewis speaks at Selma march anniversary (youtube.com) Good trouble – Soul of America informal speech – Selma, Alabama, March 1, 2020
John Lewis died in July 2020, four months after the commemorative march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. At his televised and deeply moving and honoring funeral at the end of July, President Obama spoke (always such an encouragement just to hear his voice) and eloquently summarized and memorialized the life of John Lewis in homage to his memory and his work. Through his funeral service and especially through President Obama’s eulogy, I became even more informed of his work, and his towering significance and role during the beginning of the civil rights movement – events and images that have influenced my life since I was twelve. And this greater awareness of his work since the funeral, has influenced my thought and writing as a whole in general, and very specifically in two of my postings. I describe this pivotal lifelong influence on my life and the two specific postings in greater detail in the last section of this posting – The Personal Side to this Book.
(To view the video of President Obama’s eulogy at John Lewis’ memorial funeral on July 30, 2020, please use this link: Bing Videos. This is an excellent listening!)
And then, as I thought upon the life and sayings of John Lewis, I spoke more and more about Lewis in my on-line church group discussions and began using his life and words as examples and illustrations of a man committed to his Christian faith – and being severely beaten and jailed for seeking justice, righteousness, and equity within our country for our black citizens and communities and for the nation as a whole – I decided that I should learn more about his life and the details of his work. I then thought, of course, of a finding a good book to read about his life.
Now on my extensive and varied walks within the area I live – my greater neighborhood – there are at least three “Little Libraries” near the sidewalks of different houses where the owners, and others, put books inside that anyone passing can take and keep, or take and return, or replace with other books, or just freely contribute books to the library at any time.
Then just a couple of days after my decision to learn more about John Lewis, I was on a walk, the one I call my long walk, and I passed one of the newer little libraries placed near the sidewalk and, as I always did when I encountered one, I stopped. I opened the glass panel door and – lo and behold – right there in front was a book about John Lewis, written by Jon Meacham, a man I had come to admire when encountering him on evening current event talk shows, always appreciative of his mannered, logical, and honest and gentle presentation of his viewpoints – such an encouraging contrast to the rampant anger and divisiveness constantly being manufactured and spouted on other stations and programs.
When I picked up the book, I discovered it was in pristine condition, as if no one had even opened or read it, as there was a crisp resistance in the spine to being opened, and the pages still seemed compacted together and unread. And then, most marvelous of all, I saw a medallion on the front cover proclaiming, “Signed Edition” and I opened the book to the front blank pages and – again, lo and behold – on one of the front pages was a large “JM” in black felt pen. Wow! When the Lord gives me gifts, they are always wondrous!
As I continued my walk in joy – this new book exactly what I had wanted and needed and signed to boot! – I mused for a while on this newly acquired treasure and thought how odd it seemed to find such a book unopened and unread just out in a little library entirely free and up for grabs. There of course were multiple explanations – a mistake, an Amazon package stolen from a front porch and the book placed in the library as a convenient hiding place of unwanted loot, or various other confusions, or just ignorance and a lack of informed appreciation of John Lewis or the author, Jon Meacham etc., etc. – with writers, there is no end to the imagination. But I eventually ended my musings with the thought that perhaps the book had been a gift to someone, who for whatever reason, did not want it, did not want to bother reading it, did not even know what they had in their hands, and at least instead of just throwing it away, out of respect for books, placed it in a neighborhood little library – yes, definitely a possibility among a hundred others.
But … regardless of the circumstances, the Lord had placed it in my hands as a treasure, which I have now read and thought deeply upon, and now write about it to give back at least some of this treasure to those who like how I write and appreciate what I write about…and hopefully now also others. And I write this review even more to honor the work of John Lewis and proclaim the very pivotal and substantial formative influence of this honorable man in my life, for which to my God, I am so thankful to have been blessed by his work.
(For an account of the influence of John Lewis on my early life, read the last section of this posting, “The Personal Side to this Book & The Life of John Lewis“.)
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The Author & the Book Itself
This book – His Truth is Marching On – John Lewis and the Power of Hope – is monumental for me as the author, Jon Meacham, a man of deep Christian faith, is writing about John Lewis, who Meacham admires and reveres as a man whose own deep constant faith compelled him into a life of sustained action for the voting and civil rights of African-Americans, and for the good of our nation as a whole, a man whom I also admire and who has been a deep lasting influence in my life.
Jon Meacham is a brilliant writer, a man I would describe as a writer’s writer – clear, concise, and beautiful, flowing both in the narrative and as an expression of Meacham’s own faith. This is a book where a man of faith writes about another man of faith, one whom he honors and deeply respects for both his faith and life, and the actions, sacrifices, and physical, spiritual, and mental hardships he endured to his end to translate his vision of the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community, into nonviolent actions to bring it about.
This story of John Lewis and his actions taken to secure the civil and voting rights of our country’s black citizens is rarely an easy story, but rather it is a heroic story of a pursuit of justice, righteousness, and love of God and neighbor through personal sacrifice and hardships and non-violent means. Lewis’ life is rightly a treasured national example of a committed pursuit of a specific and common good for our country, in contrast to the rising heated noise of the deceptive, hate, and oppression-driven political rhetoric of the current times within our nation and some churches that constantly swirl around us – much of it with the aim of undoing and negating the entire life-long work of John Lewis, work literally paid for and consecrated with his sweat and blood.
The primary title of this book, “His Truth is Marching On” is weighted with history and meaning. For when I first found the book, I immediately I thought of the hymn, “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the refrains to end the stanzas – “His truth is marching on”, “His day is marching on”, “Our God is marching on”, “While God is marching on” – which all refer to God, to which John Lewis would joyfully concur within his deepest being as also in the Afterword of this book, he states “I have long believed – I have longed preached – that our nation’s moral compass comes from God, it is of God, and it is seen through God. … But above all else God gave us courage – the power to believe that what I call the Spirit of History behind us is stronger than the terror of hatred in front of us. That is what I believed then. And I believe it now.”
So as one reads this book, you come to realize that the title effectively portrays the direction and impetus of Lewis’ spiritual power, his faith and trust in God and that the marching and protesting he did was under the power of the God he preached, lived under, and the God through whom he pursued the direction and calling of his life. I believe this makes him and others in the civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King Jr., unique in that they saw their struggle as bringing the Beloved Community, the Kingdom of God, unto and within the nation they loved.
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This book by Jon Meacham largely spans from Lewis’ life in rural Alabama up to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, which for him, and for many of us, was the end of a certain age of innocence, which for me was when I was still seventeen.
Jon Meacham opens the book with “Overture” which describes John Lewis’ returned in 2022 to Selma, Alabama for the 55th anniversary of the attempted March across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, then arranges the book in chapters that chronologically follows John Lewis’ life starting in the first chapter – A Hard Life, A Serious Life, with his early life growing up in Troy, Alabama– which includes Lewis’ first preachings at age four to his beloved family chickens. The book then focuses chapter by chapter on Lewis and his work and protesting for civil and voting rights in the Southern States.
The following chapters of the book are:
– The Spirit of History – Nashville, Tennessee: 1957–1960 – Sit-ins, beatings, jail time, and a bombing
(To view a video about the Nashville, TN sit-ins, please use this link: Bing Videos)
– Soul Force – The Freedom Rides: 1961 – burning buses, beatings, Ku Klux Klan, Sheriff Bull Conner, Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, jail, mob circling a church, a brutal prison time.
(To view a short history of the Freedom Riders by the Smithsonian Magazine, please use this link: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo? )
– In The Image of God and Democracy – Birmingham and Washington: 1963 – Sheriff Bull Conner, snarling dogs, water cannons against protestors, Ku Klux Klan, Governor George Wallace and “Segregation forever”, Medgar Evers assassinated, March on Washington.
(To view a video on the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama, please use this link: Bing Videos )
– We Are Going To Make You Wish You Was Dead – Freedom Summer and Atlantic City: 1963-64 – In Birmingham, four young girls killed in church bombing, President Kennedy assassinated, jail, beatings, Ku Klux Klan cross burnings, drive for voting registration in Mississippi, three Freedom workers murdered, Civil Rights Act signed,
(To view video on the Birmingham church bombing, please use this link: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=birmingham+church+bombing+1963&&mid=275C453F00D39BF6E37F275C453F00D39BF6E37F&&FORM=GVRPTV )
– I’m Going To Die Here – Selma, Alabama: 1965 – Sheriff Jim Clark, John Lewis and others assaulted and beaten by police and mounted troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Governor Wallace, LBJ, March from Selma to Montgomery
– This Country Don’t Run on Love – New York, Memphis, and Los Angeles: 1966-68 – Black Power, the War in Vietnam, urbane unrest and riots, assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, end of an age for many.
– Epilogue – Against The Rulers of The Darkness – John Lewis’ life after 1968, Congressman John Lewis, arrested still even as a Congressman, Edmond Pettus Bridge and the 55th Anniversary of the first march.
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The Afterword by John Lewis
In the Afterword to the book written by John Lewis himself and placed after the chapters written by Meacham, Lewis writes, “Silence is not the answer. So much of what makes America truly great is hanging in the balance – our openness to immigrants, our treatment of the poor, our protection of a free and fair right to vote, our care of the climate, our expansion of economic opportunity, our attitude toward our political foes. Fear is abroad in the land, and we must gather the forces of hope and march once more.”
Later in the Afterword, John Lewis writes about going forward and creating one community, one America, when he speaks of the journey still before us. “The journey begins with faith – faith in the dignity and the worth of every human being. That is an idea with roots in scripture and in the canon of America, in Genesis and in the Declaration of Independence. The journey is sustained by persistence – persistence in the pressing of the justice of the cause. And the journey is informed by hope – hope that someday, in some way, our restless souls will bring heaven and earth together, and God will wipe away every tear.”
Near the end of the Afterword he adds, “I think there’s something brewing in America that’s going to bring people closer and closer together. Adversity can bring unity; hatred can give way to love. We need a leadership of love now, a strong leadership to lift us, to transport us, to remind us that God’s truth is marching on. We can do it. We must do it. We have to go forward as one people, one family, one house. I believe in it. I believe we can do it.”
And the only thing I can add to these closing words and thoughts of John Lewis, is a gentle and quiet Amen.
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The Personal Side to this Book & The Life of John Lewis
There is also a very personal side to this book for me, for the events and actions of 1960 – 1963 described in this book in which John Lewis was a key player, as I learned about a half-century later, were essentially the substance of my political coming of age – events and thoughts and ideals which still compel and animate me to this very hour. And all of this without me knowing the name, John Lewis, one of the Lord’s tools for goodness within all the chaos, violence, and evil of those years.
For the names I knew of from the news, were President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Governor Wallace and Bull Connor, but never John Lewis, which from the book, I now understand why, for he did not seek the national spotlight, he mainly kept his presence on the street, where he was beaten and bloodied and helped enact significant change, but someone always humble and behind the scenes.
Now, my political awareness and drive and enthusiasm to understand the workings of the American political system began when I was about nine and a half and in fourth grade when John F. Kennedy was running for president. Because he was a Catholic, this was a big thing for the Catholic Church, for us as a family, for us as part of our church community, and just individually for me as a Catholic boy who attended Catholic school. And, as a new experience for me, I was fascinated by the news and sensitive to the remarks (not all supportive of Kennedy even among some of the Catholic adults in my life) swirling all around me – news and remarks about how a Catholic could not be president since he would obey the pope, that he was too young, that he had no experience, that he was a Democrat, etc., etc.
However, I was captivated by the coverage on the TV news and in the L.A. Times that was thrown on to our front yard every morning. And just before I turned ten, the 1960 Democratic Convention took place in Los Angeles, and I got to watch the convention on TV every day since it was on during the summer months when I was not in school. Then, when I was in fifth grade, Kennedy was elected president, and I remember watching the inauguration in January and we might have even been given the day off from school to watch the inauguration of the first Catholic president! So, with President Kennedy, my political awareness and education began.
In the 1960’s, when Kennedy was president, the Cold War was still at its height. The air raid sirens in Los Angeles were tested at 10:00 a.m. every last Friday of the month – and if we were in school, we jumped under our desks and covered our heads with our hands until the drone of the sirens ended – and on TV, commercials, usually late at night, ran on having a bomb shelter built in your back yard. There also always seemed to be in the air talk of atomic bombs, as war always seemed a possibility.
And this was just the way it was in the 60’s and it made me anxious at times, but after a while, I just learned how to live within this climate of possible atomic war primarily by just not thinking about the bombs or atomic war as I realized I couldn’t do anything about it anyhow.
Then during the summer of 1962, when I was twelve, at a drive-in with my family, I saw the black and white movie, “Panic in the Year Zero!”, about atomic war which took place in the Los Angeles area, which stunned and silenced me deep within. And from the movie, I realized that if Los Angeles was hit with atomic bombs, all chaos and violence, like in the movie, would ensue and I, still being a small kid, would not be able to defend my four younger sisters, and that I would be killed or just left to die.
It was then with these thoughts and reasonings, in September 1962, that I entered 7th grade. Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis in October. I watched the news on TV. I read the Los Angeles Times articles. I could see and hear the teachers talking among themselves and I believe our teacher, Mrs. Costa, said something honest and not totally reassuring, as she always spoke to us as adults.
(To listen to President Kennedy’s address to the nation on October 22, 1962 on the Cuban Missile Crisis that I had listened to, please use this link: Bing Videos)
And then at home, there was the depression and silence of my mom as she prepared for an atomic war. I remember one evening soon after the crisis started, watching my mother scrape together some money as best she could, by taking just a little money here and there from all the small white envelopes that she used to budget for various categories – food, school tuition, church giving, gas, and my dad’s weekly beer allowance. My poor mother, the only person I knew who had actually experienced bombing and rockets – in London during WWII, after she finished her schooling in the countryside, when she came back to be with her parents after being evacuated out of London when she was thirteen when the war began – who was now a mother of six in the San Fernando Valley, trying to balance the anticipated and immediate needs of the moment if war began, with money we would still need if there was not a war.
I went with my mom to buy extra groceries that evening, and I still remember how quiet the crowded market seemed to be. We didn’t buy very much compared to some of the truly overloaded other grocery carts I saw, and I was concerned. I asked my mom if we had bought enough – eight in our family, my dad and mom, and six kids, ages 2-15. My mom’s response, spoken quietly with downcast eyes and a visible quiet look of painful concern on her face, said something to the effect that what we bought was really all that we had the money to buy. Her words saddened and just stilled me even more within.
And the fears and anxiety produced by “Panic in the Year Zero” resurfaced, and as the crisis dragged on and my parents talked about it less and less in our hearing, I began to rehearse how if war came – always imagining the atomic bomb blast taking place over the Hollywood Hills in downtown L.A. and we not immediately being destroyed – and if I was at school, I would gather up my two younger sisters who were at our parish Catholic school with me and try to make it home. But our house was a couple miles away and I was never sure how that would work out or if we would survive, but at least I knew what I was going to try to do. I had a plan at least.
However, the Cuban missile crisis ended without war and that greatly eased anxiety in our lives, and the life of the nation as a whole. But the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum since Kennedy was elected, at least in my awareness, but it was the events of the winter 1962, and the spring 1963, that riveted my attention to the civil rights struggles which led to my first true political/moral/justice understanding of the civil rights struggle and certain realities of the nation in which I was born.
For during that period, George Wallace was inaugurated as governor of Alabama and gave his speech in January 1963 of “… segregation today… segregation tomorrow… segregation forever…” which shocked and troubled me that such things could be said to cheering agreeing crowds.
(To listen to Governor Wallace’s segregation speech which also includes video of the attack on the marchers, including John Lewis, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and information on the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the Birmingham church on a Sunday in which four young black girls were killed, please use this link: Bing Videos )
But more pointedly and deeply silencing was the scenes on the TV news reports and the images in the L.A. Times, from Birmingham, Alabama and Sheriff Bull Connor’s (a name I was already familiar with from the Freedom Riders of 1961) use of water cannons and German Shepherd dogs against the civil rights protesters, including students, protesting for things that I knew were right – for the right to vote – the young people doing things that would have terrified me to face, and it was those images that changed my mind and heart and life.
I was just thirteen by a month when I entered 8th grade in September 1963, and I was still internally troubled with the violence against the protestors for equal civil rights that happened while I was still in seventh grade and those which occurred during the summer between grades, which were essentially incomprehensible to me how they could actually happen, though the history of slavery within the Southern “Bible Belt” States, that we studied in school, along with the concept of gerrymandering we studied in our 7th grade Civic’s class, and all the racial segregation and violence I saw on the news and was reading about, was becoming more deeply connected in my mind.
And then within a week or so after I started 8th grade, a church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed which killed four girls, ages 11-14, and that act cemented in my mind just how determinedly violent and murderous these people were who were against civil and voting rights for black people – at that time, “Negroes”. And the racial segregation, and all the hate-filled violence, and the things Governor Wallace said, and the things that Sheriff Bull Connor did, was becoming much clearer in my mind as the realities of what the civil right protesters were enduring.
Then early in 8th grade, probably soon after the Birmingham church bombing, after our morning prayers in class, we were just about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and I suddenly realized that when we would come to the part of “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all”, that it was not true – that there was not “liberty and justice for all”. And with my hand still over my heart, I turned around and looked at my classmates for I wondered if anyone else had realized that what we were saying, repeating every day, was not true, but no one else looked troubled, though a few looked at me puzzled as to why I had turned around to look at the class, as I must have looked shocked.
That was the exact moment of my first truly political, moral and social revelation and understanding about my country, my own country and nation, a moment that has had a lasting impact on my life to this day. And all of this primarily brought about by a young man of twenty-three, whose name I had not heard, and whose life saga and importance to the progress of our nation, I would not know until just a few years before his death.
And then a few months later in November 1963, President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I would first hear about this when I was about to walk back into class after recess and a friend of mine since first grade, Dolores, who stood at the door looking dazed, told me the president had been shot. And initially I was a little annoyed with Dolores, because why was it important to know that a president of a small country somewhere had been shot, and I must have said this, as Dolores then looked directly at me, still dazed, and she said, “No, President Kennedy”.
And I was deeply shocked, like never before in my thirteen-year-old life. For before this happened, I would not have even been able to imagine a president in our country being assassinated, especially President Kennedy, the first president I was able to talk about and knew something about – like how their infant son, Patrick, died soon after birth – and Kennedy being the first Catholic president, whose election had made all of us happy.
We all then went to the church where a priest led us in prayer that the president would recover. Then when we came out of the church, as we were walking across the school playground- the parking lot – back to our class, we were told by our teacher, Sister Mary Thomas, my favorite and most influential grammar schoolteacher, that President Kennedy had died. When we heard this, there was just silence among us. I was silent, my mind was silent and still, for there was no place to put this within us that made sense or gave understanding to what had just happened.
Thus, another moment in my young life, and in my political/moral/history/all sorts of other things education, all rolled into one point of time, that was just shocking and stunning and unbelievable … except that it had happened, just like all the other things that had happened over a year and would continue to happen in my life and in the life of my country.
Then more than half-a-century later, through this book, I learned that two months after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, John Lewis was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in June 1968, where Robert Kennedy, who had just won the California primary, was shot just off the ballroom where a few weeks earlier, I had attended my senior prom. And Lewis’ experience in 1968 seems very similar to my initial stunned and uncomprehending reaction when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. For written in the book concerning Robert Kennedy’s assassination:
“Lewis was there, a part of the Kennedy retinue that had stayed upstairs in the fifth-floor suite. Watching the images of the shooting – yet another shooting – he fell to the floor. “I was crying, sobbing, heaving as if something had been busted open inside,” Lewis recalled. “I sat on the floor, dazed, rocking back and forth … saying one word out loud, over and over again. “ ‘Why? Why? Why?’ ”
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John Lewis’ Guiding Influence on My Writing on Two Specific Postings
I will let these two postings on my website speak for themselves.
Part 1, see the link below, opens with a Prologue of how in mid-August 2020, about two and a half months before the Presidential election, I discovered that the mail collection box in front of my local post office had been removed, and that a sign had been posted inside the post office in absolute gobbledygook announcing new very restricted mail collection times that I immediately and rightly understood as attempts to limit the timely arrival of mailed-in ballots to the voting center.
In the Prologue, I also write about John Lewis, especially as the positive inspiring influence to do something. The bulk of Part 1 then describes the actions I took and the letters I wrote to my representatives, senators, and family and friends about the situation at the post office. I then ended Part 1 with the email receipt of a puzzling cryptic short note from a friend with a quote from our pastor about not voting for any Democrat, which just seemed to come out of nowhere. The last paragraph describes my puzzling over the message and my inner debate on whether I should take the time to respond.
Part 2, see the link below, opens with my decision to write my friend, followed by our correspondence with this friend, that ended when my friend chose to no longer communicate.
In the Postscript of Part 2, I write that without realizing it, I was also writing to better understand the ever-widening gap between me and the church I had attended for forty years on foundational issues of our faith – the centrality of Christ and His Kingdom and adherence to the two Great Commandments of loving God with our whole mind and strength and loving or neighbor as ourselves. In just a little more than two weeks after my last correspondence with my friend, I wrote a letter to my church withdrawing my membership from the church.
Also in the Postscript to Part 2, I write, “With the admonition of John Lewis, I definitely began to attempt to engage in “good trouble”, and I hope to some degree, I was successful.” And, ironically in some ways because of how all of the communication between me and my friend began, after I posted these two posts on my website in April 1, 2021, I decided, as I stated in the last paragraph of the postscript, “From these two posts, I also now realize that I should also post the letters that I had written in past years to the pastor and elders of my church, providing now a wider and better context to these two letters to a friend and the letter withdrawing my membership.”
So, I then posted all the letters I had written over eight years to my church, which then caused even more “good trouble”, though also sad trouble. For I lost close, good, friends from church when I declined their demand/urgings that I remove my letters from my website. I came to understand that when one speaks out about something you see that isn’t right, there is always consequences.
One friend no longer wanted to meet or talk with me and that was painful, yes, but then I wasn’t beaten and jailed like John Lewis, from whose life I have learned so much, and whose influence was seminal and extensive to my own understanding of justice and courage – even though I did not know his name for a half-century after his actions and example ignited something deep and lasting within me, which remains to this day but even stronger.
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To read all letters written to my church & postings about my church, please use this link: Letters, Correspondence, & Dialogue with Church & Friends on Christ, Faith, & Christian Living – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
To specifically read the letter to the church withdrawing my forty-year membership, please use this link: Letter Withdrawing My Forty Year Membership from My Church – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
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To view all the book reviews in the Books Read, Thoughts Upon Them subcategory, please use the link below.
Books Read, Thoughts Upon Them – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
Wow! This piece is incredible!
I truly enjoyed it. For those of us who grew up in this time period, we truly identify and remember those times, we were blessed. I know parts of it were scary for us because we were but kids.
I relate to this piece so profoundly. I tell my kids because of the civil rights movement, a Mexican girl got offered a teaching job in the San Fernando Valley instead of East or South LA. Way back in 1973. Because of the movement, a Mexican girl was appointed principal in Encino in 2003. . . Because of the movement, my cousin Danny who grew up in East LA went to Harvard on a scholarship. There are so many stories like mine. The list is endless. I will go back and reread all the additional articles.
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