I just learned about her today. With the year’s end we mark the passing of those who left gifts for all of us, purchased with their strength. This lady dragged the powers that be kicking and screaming out of their ignorance into the face of justice.
She recognized that the world she was given was not fixed. The Mississippi of her youth, the level of deprivation and oppression, is incomprehensible. And to be uncomprehending of it speaks to what happened because of those like her and to now, with the changes she began. The world she left is not fixed. But it is no longer that.
Her life reminds me that I don’t know these people who worked for us, life in danger, to connect freedom with opportunity. I know the ones you know. For every one we know there are a thousand others like Unita.