FYI re: LBJ

I read with great interest the latest Bulletin, especially the gripping stories of the participants in the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the ’60s. However, there is an error in the article about the heroic Mimi Feingold Real ’63. 

Lyndon Johnson’s motive behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 cannot have been the disappearance of Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner. Johnson signed the legislation almost exactly at the time the three disappeared. I was working with SNCC at that time in Columbus, Miss, and we were almost simultaneously handing out copies of The New York Times front-page summary of the Act and looking for the three CORE workers. 

Perhaps the author meant that their disappearance was a motive for his pushing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

—Paul Marcus ’55, New York, N.Y.