University of California

School of Education 

Berkeley 4, California 

April 26, 1960 

Miss Priscilla Stephens 

City Jail 

Tallahassee, Florida 

Dear Miss Stephens:

I hope this letter reaches you, but of course I don't know whether it will. I am writing to you, because I understand you are training yourself for elementary education. I am a supervisor of student teachers in social studies in secondary schools. When I saw your name in your sister's letter in the CORE-LATOR, I thought I would make you my correspondent. 

There is no way for me to say what is in my heart, but I want you know that thousands in this country love you for your courage and vision and faith, and millions are stirred and inspired by you brave young people who have finally dared to try to make right in a country grown too rich and too proud and too smug and too insensitive. As a colleague of mine said to me when I first told him of CORE--thoughtfully, wistfully--for he is a Negro--"There is a moral force loose in the world." 

When you teach one day, you will be able to do something I have never done, make the history of America live, for you are now making the best part of history, as significant as anything ever done by Lincoln or Garrison or Jefferson or Patrick Henry--and purer, too, because it brings a new moral principle to the solution of deep problems in society--the principle of non-violence and love. 

God bless you always, Priscilla, and your family, friends, and comrades. We are all deeply in debt to you, and America can never forget the history you are now making. Success to you later, as one of the kind of people we need in our schools. 

With love and respect, 

[Signature] Gene McRory

Supervisor of Secondary Education