Kimberly Williams Crenshaw

And it just seemed that everywhere people were...

It's like the wind had been taken out of us.

The spirit had been taken out of us.

There was such a feeling of an upward trajectory.

We were clearly aware that we were in the middle.

of a fight over equality.

I was born at a time where some of the basic things that we take for granted now were not yet legal, including the Voting Rights Act.

But there was still some sense that we were arriving somewhere.

And this was just like

not just air out of the balloon, it sort of exploded our sense of possibility.

So I remember it clearly, and I think it also was punctuated by the next day when the activists brought all of us together in a church and asked all of us, you know, did anyone have anything to say about

about this moment.

And we were kids from kindergarten to high school, and we were all sitting in the church.

And it pained me

Because no one had anything to say.

Maybe the words weren't there.

Our emotions were all confused.

But the silence just was devastating to me.

What I remember the most is the feeling.

We cannot let them turn us around.