From Candie Anderson
Author: Anderson, Candie
Date: October 20, 1960
Location: Claremont, Calif.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Arrests
Student movements
Details
Candie Anderson, a Pomona College student who had attended the Atlanta SNCC conference, writes King and the other jailed Atlanta protesters.1
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
and other sit-in participants
c/o Atlanta City Jail (?)
Dear Rev. King & cohorts:
Congratulations on your most recent action against Atlanta's segregation policy. When I left the Conference Sunday evening I didn't realize there would be such immediate action right there in Atlanta. I think that most of us came away with enthusiasm & determination which we hope we can channel into something tangible, but your demonstration will provide further stimulation.
From what news we can get here it sounds as though some of you will remain in jail until trial. More power to you. I really do hope it has the effect of forcing the community to face the issue squarely.
The students here who sent me to the Atlanta Conference are very much interested in what was discussed there and now in the action you have taken. I hope their concern can be directed toward some very real problems of discrimination right here in California as well as in sympathy for the movement in the South.
My thoughts are with you. I think of what helped me more than once when I was in Nashville last year. . . "Walk together, Children . . . don't you get weary . . ." and I am encouraged by what this movement is doing for America.
Best wishes—
[signed] Candie Anderson
1. Carolanne (Candie) Marie Anderson Carawan (1939- ), born in Los Angeles, California, received a B.A. (1961) from Pomona College. While an exchange student at Fisk University during the spring of 1960, she attended James Lawson's nonviolent training workshops and participated in sit-ins. At a gathering of southern student activists at Highlander Folk School that April, she met singer and songwriter Guy Carawan, whom she married the following year. In the mid-1960s, the Carawans organized a number of "Sing for Freedom" workshops around the South that SCLC helped sponsor. They later worked at Highlander as cultural organizers and educators, producing four books and a dozen documentary albums on the traditional music of the Deep South's African American and Appalachian communities.
Source: SCLCR-GAMK, Southern Christian Leadership Conference Records, 1954-1970, Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga., Box 5.