I am a Benedictine nun and an alumna of the law school, Class of 1986, where my name was Monica Evans. I read with interest the Spring 2011 Stanford Lawyer’s “Remembrance” of the Hon. Warren Christopher ’49, by Judge Raymond C. Fisher ’66. The article is an informative and thought-provoking evocation of a respected public servant in difficult times. But I was surprised that Judge Fisher described the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as “based on the initiatives of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson,” without any reference to the civil rights workers who at great peril of their lives performed the dangerous work of voter registration drives, organized and participated in the “Bloody Sunday” voting rights march in Selma, and urged the Kennedy and Johnson administrations [to vote] for the Voting Rights Act. Surely Dr. King, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and others “in the trenches” had at least as much to do with bringing about the Voting Rights Act. The initiative lies with them at the very least. 
In this sesquicentennial year of the Civil War we are becoming more aware of how official narratives of difficult times often obscure the very history they purport to narrate. Journalist David von Drehle captures the problem well: “It’s not simply a matter of denial. For most of the first century after the [Civil] war, historians, novelists and filmmakers worked like hypnotists to soothe the post-traumatic memories of survivors and their descendants. Forgetting was the price of reconciliation, and Americans—those whose families were never bought or sold, anyway—were happy to pay it.” (Newsweek 4/18/11) We must not forget whose initiatives and whose blood brought about the Voting Rights Act. Otherwise, we lose one of the law school lessons enumerated by Pat Greene, JD ’90, in “Last Word” of the very same issue of Stanford Lawyer in which Judge Fisher’s “Remembrance” appears—“I learned that rights not staunchly defended can be, if not lost, then watered down.” Surely this lesson applies to the Voting Rights Act and civil rights history as well.