The single most important disparity, as my list of the causes I supported might indicate, is that we knew quite definitively what it was that we were demanding. That is, we had a clear conception of what it would mean to win: to have achieved our goal. The Civil Rights movement succeeded – after a campaign of extraordinary courage and perseverance – first in de-segregating the schools in Alabama, and then in getting Congress to pass an Act that made racial discrimination illegal. So those campaigners who went down to Mississippi to register black voters knew that they had not risked their lives for nothing. The young men who burned their draft cards (a federal offence) and then fled the country were aware that they were sacrificing their American futures – but they also knew precisely what would constitute a victory for their side of the argument.