I remember college as a place of possibility.
We protested — yes — but we did so with sit-ins, with leaflets, with raised voices and locked arms. We marched and we sang “We Shall Overcome Someday.” We believed, perhaps naively, that collective courage and moral clarity could bend institutions toward justice, and that the struggle for change did not require the threat of death.
I never once feared that going to class might cost me my life…