"Persistence tells the story of Evelyn Thomas Butts (1924-1993), an African American civil rights crusader from Norfolk, Virginia, whose nontraditional leadership and creative initiatives remain as models for political and social change. A courageous, low-income seamstress, Butts is best-known for her 1963 lawsuit that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1966 ruling to ban poll taxes from state and local elections. Butts relentlessly encouraged voter-participation and kept marginalized citizens connected with the national ...
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"Persistence tells the story of Evelyn Thomas Butts (1924-1993), an African American civil rights crusader from Norfolk, Virginia, whose nontraditional leadership and creative initiatives remain as models for political and social change. A courageous, low-income seamstress, Butts is best-known for her 1963 lawsuit that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1966 ruling to ban poll taxes from state and local elections. Butts relentlessly encouraged voter-participation and kept marginalized citizens connected with the national civil rights movement, which heavily relied on many unsung grassroots leaders-especially women-to overthrow America's Jim Crow system of segregation and suppression. Standing amid the continuum of Black resistance leaders questing for freedom, civil rights, equality, justice, dignity, and self-determination, Butts helped reshape the politics of Norfolk, a feat that continues to reverberate today"--
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