Run: Book One

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains vivid descriptions of racism and racist violence. 

Mere days after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chairman John Lewis is leading efforts to integrate a church in Americus, Georgia. The police arrive to arrest them, and outside the courthouse, a large group of Ku Klux Klan members assemble. Although they spout the same racist slogans as ever, they seem to be adopting the civil rights movement’s tactics of marching publicly without directly confronting their opponents. Only a few days later, a police stop of a Black motorist in the Watts section of Los Angeles gathers an angry crowd. When the officer responds with violence, the crowd begins throwing stones at his cruiser. In the days that followed—“some folks called it an ‘uprising,’ some folks, a ‘riot’” (16)—clashes between police (backed by the National Guard) and citizens leave dozens dead and thousands injured or arrested. Speaking on behalf of Lewis, SNCC communications director Julian Bond issues a statement that denounces the “frustration, bitterness, and sense of despair” that ultimately drove the people of Watts past the brink (18), and calls for a redistribution of socioeconomic power far beyond the single issue of segregation.