Kimberly Williams Crenshaw

We cannot let them take our dreams away from us by just killing us.

our leader.

We know that's what they're trying to do.

And we just won't stand for it.

Gutted, of course, because this moment that I'm retelling was a part of a legacy of fighting back, part of a legacy of sacrificing.

People actually died for these laws.

They were beaten by

Some of them damaged for life because it was more important to insist on the promises that were made to us as a people, to us as a democracy, than it was to hide their light or just to fold into a status quo that was unlivable.

And having...

lived through that moment, albeit as a child.

I mean, I watched this stuff unfolding on television.

I watched the Selma marchers being beaten.

I watched children my age being

Tortured, frankly, by dogs being, you know, their bodies being tossed into the air by water hoses simply because they were demanding to be given the same access, being treated the same way as any other American.

And having been able to enjoy the fruits of that labor and the fruits of that sacrifice through the creation of the Voting Rights Act, which is called the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, seeing it systemically dismantled.

piece by piece by piece, to see that history basically be unwritten right now, being erased right now, seeing us being pushed back right now.

It makes me want to weep, but we don't have time for that.

This is a time to talk back against that erasure.

Yeah.

Well, this was actually property that she inherited from her father, who was one of two black doctors in town.