the
FIGHTER Margaret Block battled the Klan, opposed the Vietnam War and had a run-in with Black Panthers. At 72, she’s still ready to rumble.
By Mollie Mansfield
I
t wasn’t hard to spot Margaret Block as she prowled the streets of Charleston in her red shirt and coveralls, the classic Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee uniform, trying to help black folks register to vote. Suddenly a big black hearse pulled up. “Who died?” she asked. “Get in the back,” ordered Birdia Keglar, president of the local NAACP and owner of the black funeral home. Keglar had been tipped to a Ku Klux Klan plan to murder Block. In Tallahatchie County, not far from where two white men killed 14-year-old Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman, death threats were not to be taken lightly.
THE MEEK REPORT 121
