Randolph looked at Lewis, near tears, and pleaded, “I’ve waited my whole life for this opportunity. When his fellow SNCC organizers noticed a table with printed copies for the media of another speaker’s address, they quickly made copies of Lewis’s speech and put it on the same table. Rustin told Lewis that someone had delivered a copy of his speech to Patrick O’Boyle, the archbishop of Washington, who was supposed to give the opening invocation. Rustin cryptically told him that was enough “for now,” and there would be further edits the next day. But the most ferocious was John Lewis’s.”

Source: Washington Post July 18, 2020 04:22 UTC