ABSTRACT
From the earliest days of the boycott, Virginia sensed that she was witnessing a historic shift. She strained to find words to convey the new spirit reflected in the protest that united 50,000 black people in the challenge to segregation. “It has a quality of hope and joy about it that I wish I could give you,” she wrote Jessica Mitford. “I feel like I am in touch with all the rising forces in the world and the end of fear and slavery is in sight. I know this is just a moment, but…it only takes a moment for a new world to be conceived.”1
