A defining moment: standing up for others' rights

One weekend 40 years ago changed my life. I had grown up white, middle class, a responsible achiever with a strong sense of justice and caring, a pacifist and a peacemaker – not a challenger. This changed in late June 1966 when I happened to watch on the evening news the beating of men, women, and children inside tents that had been erected for what is now known as the Meredith March.

James Meredith was at that time a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement. His enrollment at the University of Mississippi in 1962 as its first black student had sparked riots and the intervention of federal troops. Later, as a Columbia University law student, Mr. Meredith and a few companions planned a March Against Fear from Memphis, Tenn., to Jackson, Miss., to encourage African-Americans to register and vote. He was ambushed and wounded on Highway 51 in Mississippi. The next day, leaders of civil rights groups announced that they would resume his march later in the month.

At the time, I was living in a white Chicago suburb with my husband and two children. The only African-Americans most encountered in our neighborhood were service people. This was not the world I wanted my children to know, which is why I took them to a preschool in another town that wasn't all white. I became active in civil rights: a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the social action committee at my church, doing restaurant and housing discrimination testing. We had black friends.

But seeing the violent acts on TV was a different defining moment for me. I had an urgent need to stand up for what I saw as basic human rights, to put myself on the front lines.

So on a hot June evening in Chicago, June 24, 1966, I boarded a little yellow school bus with three other friends for the 750-mile trip to Jackson, Miss. We rode southward singing, "We Shall Overcome."

My daughter Becca, who was 12 years old at the time, had sent me off with these words: "I'll just die if anything happens to you." Her concern was real – a Detroit woman working for civil rights had recently been killed.

Our first stop in Jackson was Pratt Memorial Church where we filled out forms listing the names of relatives to be notified in case of an emergency. Sobering. The church women served us chicken dinners, barely edible in the intense heat.

We later waited along Highway 51 to join the other marchers. First came the sound of approaching feet and voices and then there in the distance came the moving figures led by civil rights leaders. In the middle of the first row walked Martin Luther King Jr., with his arm around his wife, Coretta. We fell in line and walked in the heat to Tougaloo College to prepare for the next day.

After a rally with celebrity supporters in the gym, my friends and I laid down our bedrolls on the campus lawn. The designated sleeping area in the gym was stifling and pungent with unwashed bodies. After a long wait the next morning under a large shade tree (where we practiced furling and unfurling flags we never used), the march got under way.

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