Plus, a federal court had just decided White officials in his county couldn’t stop Black people from voting in the Democratic primary. Before he died, Snipes told police exactly who had lured him out onto the porch that night — a fellow World War II veteran named Edward Williamson. Cases like this one are what motivated the Black community to push for civil rights and the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, Anderson says in the documentary. His murder, and the lynchings of others in Georgia the next week, got the attention of a 17-year-old student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. The young man was moved enough to write a letter to the editor published in the Atlanta Constitution on Aug. 6, 1946.

Source: Washington Post September 13, 2020 11:02 UTC