civil rights at home I

Deeply involved in the civil rights movement of the 60s, my parents opened our home to SNCC volunteers who were coming to New York City for training seminars. Two people had, one at a time, stayed with us. One was a dark brown man, I think his name was Greg. The other was a small slim woman with the unlikely name of Tut Tate. Tut has lived in my memory all these years and a little while ago when I was getting ready to take seven kids of various ages on a civil rights trip south, I looked her up on the Web.

It was no surprise to find she’d remained involved in the civil rights movement all her life, moving from voter registration drives in the 60s to union work in the next decades. I was able to recover all this information in her obituary. She’d died young, at only 49, from lung cancer. Although I’d missed her death by several years, I felt a hole open up in my universe.

Reading the obit through carefully it slowly dawned on me that she’d been a mere six years my senior. As I was attending elementary school in Manhattan, she was risking her life registering voters in Mississippi. She was only 18.

I couldn’t remember the games we used to play together, but I had a clear sense memory of our lives intertwining deeply for those few weeks she spent living with us. After learning of her abbreviated life, I went searching through some boxes where I was sure I had a physical memento from her. I sat very still on the bed as I opened the folded letter dated June 17, 1966.