Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lewis,

When you use your history as a hero of the Movement to disparage others because you never personally knew them, it is a slap in the face to all those people who fought hard and never made it into the history books or into Congress. It is a slap in the face to people like my grandmother.

Last week, you stat­ed the fol­low­ing about Bernie Sanders’s record on fight­ing for civ­il rights in the 1960s:

I nev­er saw him. I nev­er met him. I was chair of the Stu­dent Non­vi­o­lent Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee for three years, from 1963 to 1966. I was involved with the sit-ins, the Free­dom Rides, the March on Wash­ing­ton, the march from Sel­ma to Mont­gomery and direct­ed (the) vot­er edu­ca­tion project for six years. But I met Hillary Clin­ton. I met Pres­i­dent (Bill) Clinton.

We are going to ignore the fact that Hillary Clin­ton was a ​“Gold­wa­ter Girl,” or that you once stat­ed to a Clin­ton biog­ra­ph­er that “[t]he first time I ever heard of Bill Clin­ton was the 1970s,” or that it has already been well-estab­lished that Sanders worked with the Con­gress for Racial Equal­i­ty (CORE) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go in the 1960s. We are also going to leave aside the fact that every men­tion of Bill Clin­ton in your book Walk­ing With the Wind described an instance that he opposed some pol­i­cy that you cher­ished. Instead, we are going to talk about anoth­er per­son that you nev­er saw or met.

Dorothy Marie Boone-Ander­son was born in Gates Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na in 1935 as one of sev­en chil­dren. She left for­mal school­ing in the eighth grade to go into the fields and work to sup­port her fam­i­ly. Times were always hard for the Boones, and the lack of edu­ca­tion­al prospects for the fam­i­ly meant that times would always be hard. That was a lega­cy of a seg­re­ga­tion that always kept Black fam­i­lies at the edge of the Amer­i­can Dream: close enough to be eter­nal­ly tor­tured by a suc­cess that was con­stant­ly vis­i­ble yet always elu­sive. In ear­ly 1953, Dorothy became preg­nant by a man named Dou­glas Wash­ing­ton Williams. Her son, Luther, would be born on Sep­tem­ber 21, 1953.

It was the birth of my father that spurred my grand­moth­er into orga­niz­ing with­in the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, deter­mined that her chil­dren would nev­er have to live in a world where eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties were denied to them because of their race. She orga­nized along­side Hay­wood Rid­dick at the Nanse­mond Coun­ty SNCC and orga­ni­za­tions like the Wilroy Civic League, which act­ed as a locus for social and polit­i­cal activ­i­ty in the neigh­bor­hood that they lived in.

As I am sure you know, it made sense for them to focus on inte­grat­ing the pub­lic school sys­tem. My father went to Wilroy School, an ele­men­tary school that was built with $900 from the Rosen­wald Fund. This fund, set up by Sears and Roe­buck exec­u­tive Julius Rosen­wald, was nec­es­sary to ensure that Black chil­dren received edu­ca­tion in areas where the state refused to pro­vide them. It stood as a tes­ta­ment to the dis­re­gard that the Com­mon­wealth of Vir­ginia showed to its most vul­ner­a­ble populations.

The fight was long and hard, but in the fall of 1965, the Nanse­mond Coun­ty School Sys­tem final­ly inte­grat­ed. The pho­to above shows my father (in the mid­dle) and my grand­moth­er (to his right) stand­ing in front of Dri­ver Ele­men­tary School, the first school in the coun­ty to be inte­grat­ed. The 1970 – 1971 school year, my father’s senior year, would final­ly see all schools in the coun­ty inte­grat­ed. He would grad­u­ate from John F. Kennedy High School in Suffolk.

Pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics might be the back­drop for this sto­ry, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lewis, but this has noth­ing to do with Bernie Sanders. The hurt­ful nature of your com­ments has to do with your era­sure of the peo­ple who worked out­side of the spot­light and the nation­al press to make sure that the Civ­il Rights Move­ment touched every cor­ner of Black Amer­i­ca. As I said ear­li­er, you did not know or meet my grand­moth­er. Your lack of acquain­tance with her does not coun­ter­feit the work she put in, like it does not coun­ter­feit the work of any oth­er per­son you did not know and yet sought to bring to birth a bet­ter world than the one they came into.

The lim­it­ed amount of free­dom that we Black Amer­i­cans enjoy today is due in large part to the ral­lies orga­nized, the meals cooked, the plans con­ceived and the brav­ery shown by orga­niz­ers whose names we will nev­er know. Believe it or not, our free­dom was not won by the Big Six alone. When you use your his­to­ry as a hero of the Move­ment to dis­par­age oth­ers because you nev­er per­son­al­ly knew them, it is a slap in the face to all those peo­ple who fought hard and nev­er made it into the his­to­ry books or into Con­gress. It is a slap in the face to peo­ple like my grandmother.

The move­ment that you, my grand­moth­er, Sen­a­tor Sanders and count­less thou­sands were a part of was the largest grass­roots move­ment for social, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic change that this coun­try has ever seen. It was a move­ment that was big­ger than any one par­tic­i­pant in it; a move­ment that, at its best, was unapolo­get­i­cal­ly rad­i­cal and dri­ven by the Black work­ing class. We should live every moment in awe and praise of all of those peo­ple and not sweep them under the rug when it is polit­i­cal­ly expedient.

Hillary Clin­ton ain’t worth that. Not to me, and not to mil­lions of oth­ers who owe every­thing to the Dorothy Marie Boone-Ander­sons of this world.

Sin­cere­ly,

Dou­glas Williams