Engaging Norma Rae: A Journal

Roanoke Rapids, N.C.

July 18, 1977

Dear Ann: No matter how long I stay here I’m sure to go on feeling like Rip Van Winkle. Twelve years after Mississippi I’m back in a South I still can’t believe. It’s not simply that relations between blacks and whites are better than anything I could have imagined, it’s the number of radical whites (native born) I’m constantly meeting. Even when I allow for the fact that this is the town leading the fight to...