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Longtime Arlington activist recalls secret integrated youth meetings, sit-ins and Freedom Rides
Summary
A longtime Arlington County activist recounts growing up in Buckingham Apartments, organizing secret integrated youth meetings, participating in sit-ins across Northern Virginia, joining the Freedom Riders, studying at Tougaloo College, and later teaching ESL while founding a foundation to educate about civil rights.
Speaker 1, a longtime Arlington resident and civil-rights activist, described decades of grassroots organizing that began with secret integrated youth meetings in the 1950s and continued through sit-ins, Freedom Rides and work with the March on Washington. "There were secret meetings," Speaker 1 said, "not even tell our parents because we could get locked out of the church. The police could come and arrest us."
The interview traced how early exposure to New York Jewish neighbors at Buckingham Apartments and church teachings shaped Speaker 1's views. At Duke University as a freshman, she joined sit-ins in Durham, was arrested twice and said university administrators pressured her to stop. "They thought we needed…
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