 Mr. Hollis Watkins tells stories of the Mississippi Voting Rights Movement |  James Chaney's daughter, Angela Lewis, tells of the father she never knew because his life was taken from her in the fight for civil rights |
The Mississippi Delta is full of dirt roads laid out straight as rulers across its flat landscape and disappearing into nowhere.
“I'm very thankful today for dirt roads," Civil Rights Movement veteran Hollis Watkins said with a chuckle. The dust a car kicks up acting as a shield that helped keep him safe when making an escape.
Today we entered into story, hearing the kind of details you get so powerfully when someone shares their history in conversation:
Evelyn Cole Calloway describing how her father, despite having a broken jaw and ribs, a ruptured spleen, and damage to his spine from a beating by the Klan, refused her mother's pleas to see a doctor because he couldn't be sure the doctor wasn't part of the Klan.
And James Chaney's daughter, Angela Lewis, making him come alive by telling us about the song he would sing to warn his siblings their mother was almost home and they needed to straighten up the house, and how he became so passionate about the Civil Rights Movement that he would spend nights at the community center.
Stories we won't forget and can pass along to help keep the legacy alive.
-- by Kathy Davis
“I'm very thankful today for dirt roads," Civil Rights Movement veteran Hollis Watkins said with a chuckle. The dust a car kicks up acting as a shield that helped keep him safe when making an escape.
Today we entered into story, hearing the kind of details you get so powerfully when someone shares their history in conversation:
Evelyn Cole Calloway describing how her father, despite having a broken jaw and ribs, a ruptured spleen, and damage to his spine from a beating by the Klan, refused her mother's pleas to see a doctor because he couldn't be sure the doctor wasn't part of the Klan.
And James Chaney's daughter, Angela Lewis, making him come alive by telling us about the song he would sing to warn his siblings their mother was almost home and they needed to straighten up the house, and how he became so passionate about the Civil Rights Movement that he would spend nights at the community center.
Stories we won't forget and can pass along to help keep the legacy alive.
-- by Kathy Davis
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