In 1966, a freshman at a college in Maine attended a speech given by Floyd McKissick, newly appointed head of the Congress of Racial Equality, better known as CORE. In the packed auditorium there were no more than a half-dozen African-Americans that came to hear the “radical” new leader whose mission was to raise awareness of gross racial inequality. McKissick’s animated and passionate litany clearly affected the mostly white, middle-class audience, which sat wide-eyed and still as he detailed the shameful history of persecution to which most of society had turned a blind eye.

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