Their ride was a 1950s-era panel van. Either a Ford or a Chevy, I’m not sure. And either light blue or light green, I’m not sure of that either.

After nearly 60 years, it’s difficult to remember that level of detail. But everything else is vividly etched in my mind about that late summer afternoon in 1965 when my brother, Louis Sanford, left our Como, Mississippi, farm with a white guy from up North named Chris.

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With the uneasy blessing of our mom and dad, Louis agreed to accompany Chris around to neighboring homes to encourage eligible African Americans to register to vote.

This was mere days after then-President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law banning discriminatory voting practices that were rampant in Mississippi and throughout the South.

It was also one year after three civil rights workers were tortured and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan — aided by a local sheriff’s deputy — in Philadelphia, Mississippi, about 150 miles south of Como.

Even at age 12, I paid close attention to the news and was keenly aware of the dangerous times in which we were living. So my angst over Louis taking off with Chris to do something that could potentially get them both arrested or killed was understandable.

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They both knew the danger as well. At 17, Louis was not old enough to vote himself. But this was a cause he believed in strongly. And he expertly navigated Chris over the gravel roads to the people who likely would be receptive to calls for voting rights.

That nondescript panel van also helped the cause since riding in anything newer and flashier — say a shiny red convertible — was out of the question. It would attract too much attention in our rural community.

This was just one of many ways my brother showed a level of courage that I initially feared, but eventually grew to admire. And I will remember his courage forever.

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Louis passed away suddenly on Monday morning, Nov. 21, at his home in Chicago, where he had lived for more than 50 years. He was 74. He had told his six siblings during one of our recent monthly Zoom calls that he was being treated for a recurring heart condition. But he downplayed the severity.

Now, our sorrow is unimaginable. But this column is not designed to induce a pity party. Louis lived a great life. He married a wonderful Mississippi woman, who sadly passed away in 2016, and together they had two wonderful sons. And Louis rose through the ranks at the Chicago Transit Authority to become a senior vice president.

Instead, this column, for me, is cathartic in a sense. Louis had such a dominant influence on my life — perhaps even more than my parents. And I always wanted to be just like him.

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He taught me to love cars, taught me how to play basketball and the trumpet. I followed in his footsteps by earning a spot on the varsity high school basketball team and playing in the high school band. And I followed his lead by attending Northwest Mississippi Junior College for my first two years of higher education — although I had a much easier time at Northwest dealing with racial attitudes than he did.

But without question, the most important lesson I learned from my big brother was the imperative to do all you can to promote equality and human rights. His travels around our rural community with Chris, the voting rights activist, in that old van was just one of the ways he tried to make a difference.

There was also the time when he and two or three of his teenage friends decided to take a stand against racial segregation by sitting in a booth reserved only for white customers at the local Como drug store. That simple act drew a crowd of onlookers, mostly African Americans, who peered incredulously through the front window. One older Black man yelled out that their parents “should whip them all.”

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After waiting several minutes and not being served, Louis and his companions left the drug store without incident. A few days later, all the booths were removed.

Mission accomplished.

While in college at Mississippi Valley State in Itta Bena, Louis took part in a sit-in on campus, again to bring attention to racial inequity. That act earned him and others a brief trip to nearby Parchman Prison.

I was never so bold as to attempt any of those acts of nonviolent protest. And thankfully, I didn’t have to. By the time I reached my late teenage years, things were starting to change for the better, even in Mississippi.

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Unlike Louis, I was welcomed at Northwest and later attended Ole Miss on a journalism scholarship where I poured myself into fulfilling a lifelong dream of being a newspaper reporter. Louis had a hand in that too. He briefly worked on the high school newspaper.

But after 32 years of straight reporting and editing the news, I moved full time to the opinion side of journalism, where I could freely express my views on the issues that confront our community and society.

And I make no apologies. My political and social views stem from my background as a Black kid growing up in segregated Mississippi. Despite what my critics say, I do not wallow in the wrongs of the past. Louis didn’t either. I do, however, insist that those wrongs be addressed, not distorted or covered up.

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In 1998, I wrote a column addressing racial intolerance after the brutal dragging death of a Black man, James Byrd, in Jasper, Texas, and after Black leaders in Memphis objected to an appearance here by conservative African American Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. In that column, I recounted part of the story about Louis leaving me on the front porch for hours to attend to a cause far greater than both of us.

I asked him for that column to settle the debate. Who was the real enemy of African Americans, the Ku Klux Klan in white robes or Clarence Thomas in a black robe?

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“The real enemy is still the Klan and people with Klannish attitudes,” Louis told me. “But people with Klannish attitudes can be on a lonely country road in Texas, in the boardrooms of corporate America or even on the Supreme Court bench.”

Bingo.

Sage words from my brother, my role model, my hero and my friend.

Rest well.