Let us all remember: history makes us and we the people make history - Elizabeth Martínez

We should also recall the exclusively Black-white model of race relations, which makes all other peoples invisible. It is not surprising that two dozen white writers who have been conditioned to see the struggles of Asian/Pacific Island Americans, Latinos and Native Americans as minor would write their books accordingly.

When I worked for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC from 1961 to 1968, first as a volunteer and then as full-time staff, it seemed perfectly natural. If a person wanted to spend her life tearing down the prison called White Supremacy, what better place to go than the Black movement? And proudly, too. It took a few years to wonder, how does a person who isn't white-but not Black either-fit into the color scheme of this color-obsessed society? After a while, some unexplored Mexican spirit inside, and the changing times outside, drew me to the Southwest, where I had never been. It had its own prison of White Supremacy. But the two prisons were really one, and the fight was really one, and a perfectly natural voice said: Let us tear down all prisons together. Amen.

For them as for so many others, the anti-racist struggle in Mississippi has its steps forward together with its steps back-like any other struggle. So much has changed and yet remains unchanged. As of 1998, Mississippi had 10 black sheriffs (more than any other state) but chose in 2001 to retain the Confederate symbol of flags and bars in its flag. Racism lives, and not only in Mississippi. From the criminal injustice system to attacks on affirmative action, from environmental racism to intensifying poverty and the prison system, today's struggles often seem not so different from four decades ago. Denial of Black voting rights, a crucial southern issue in 1964, turned out to be very crucial nationwide in 2000, when it may well have decided the presidency, as Florida's voting records confirm. The role of racism in U.S. foreign policy and its domestic consequences became unmistakable with the government's response to the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Many people see more clearly today than before that ending racism is central and essential to any transformation of the human condition. The only fatal mistake in this long, hard struggle is cynicism.