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Endesha: A New Walk for Freedom Where the old Cat had walked her “walk,” sensuous and slow and wanting only to attract the longing gaze of hungry men, this new Cat had no time for that kind of nonsense. I raced to get where I needed to go, even arriving early, eager to get a head start on the day’s work. I couldn’t wait for freedom to come to me; I was poised to take elusive freedom in one long leap. For the first time in my life I knew who I was. Endesha Ida Mae Holland, From the Mississippi Delta One of the most significant, yet overlooked, aspects of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was the role it played in instilling in blacks a sense of pride and dignity that inspired them to overcome circumstances of birth, race, and place to achieve something in life. A number of the movement’s lieutenants went on to impressive public careers. I have in mind such individuals as Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Maya Angelou, Andrew Young, Fannie Lou Hamer, and John Lewis, all of whom were nourished in some way or form by the movement. They developed leadership and organizational skills that proved invaluable in their careers as social and political leaders. Yet there were countless other average citizens who gained a sense of their value as individuals and refused to submit to the indignities heaped upon them by the stewards of American apartheid. Endesha 188 Charles Payne’s wonderful book i’ve Got the light of freedom chronicles many of the stories of those individuals. For, in the final analysis, this was a movement that attempted to dismantle not only the outer barriers of racism and bigotry but also the inner barriers of fear and diffidence. In fact, giving blacks a deeper sense of their value as human beings may be seen in the long run as one of the greatest contributions of the civil rights movement. Among the more remarkable of these personal stories is that of Endesha Ida Mae Holland, who was born in my hometown of Greenwood and was known to all of us as Cat. No doubt a talented, street-smart girl, she seemed to be headed toward, at best, a life of poverty not unlike that of many other girls and, at worst, a prison sentence or death. Hers is a completely engaging and captivating story, that of an individual who rose from a life of petty crime and hustling to a career as a college professor and playwright—a pilgrimage from the meanest of circumstances to a quality existence. It is not unlike the one that Malcolm X made, and indeed, both Endesha and Malcolm came to tell their stories not so much to celebrate their own lives but to show the possibilities for human advancement in the face of oppression. True to her adopted Swahili name, Endesha—which means “to steer, to lead, to guide”—she wanted to drive both herself and others forward. How else are we to account for the many incidents of deeply personal testimony that we see on almost every page of her memoir? She was a class or two ahead of me in school, so I didn’t know firsthand of her hustling. In any case, I would have been quite out of place among those youngsters who played hooky and exhibited rebellious behavior. There were a number of others, including my sister, who could confirm Endesha’s stories. They remember Cat picking up tricks on McLaurin Street and in the 82 Grill. It’s not a stretch, then, to proffer that of all of us growing up in Greenwood, she would be among the least likely to go on to earn a PhD. That she did in fact complete her degree speaks volumes about her native intelligence and her motivation and perseverance. It also speaks a great deal about the influence of the movement on the lives of many individuals in Greenwood. The parallel with Maya Angelou may be even more immediate, for she, like Ida, was raped at an early age, though the circumstances were quite different . We may remember that Marguerite (Maya) was raped by her stepfather when she was only eight years old. This was such a profound moment in her young life that it led to her inability to speak for several years. It would be difficult to imagine any event silencing Cat at that age or later...

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