The passing of our brother, Avon Rollins this past Wednesday (December 7, 2016), is a loss that is deeply felt within our community of SNCC veterans and the Movement as a whole.  Like so many of us, activism pulled Avon into the freedom struggle while still in his teens. Just a few weeks after the Greensboro sit-ins erupted, Avon, a Knoxville, Tennessee native, then a high school student, joined other students, mainly from Knoxville College, in launching a sit-in movement. He was one of the youngest in this group of protesters.

 

Barely a year later he joined Marion Barry in enrolling in the recently desegregated University of Tennessee. By then his interest in SNCC, which he considered "the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement," had grown. By the summer of 1963 he was a member of SNCC's executive committee. That year he went to Danville, Virginia as a SNCC organizer to support the burgeoning movement there. He stayed there a year. 

June 1938 - April 3, 2018.

Retired history professor. Charles F. McDew led his first demonstration in the eighth grade, to protest violations of the religious freedom of Amish students in his hometown of Massillon, Ohio. McDew’s career as an activist expanded in scope while he was a freshman at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Inevitably involved in the newborn sit-in movement, he was elected as student leader by his fellow demonstrators. McDew attended the founding conference  of SNCC at Shaw in April 1960 while a student at South Carolina State and a member of The Orangeburg Movement for Civil Improvement. He served as the second Chairman of SNCC, 1960-1963. McDew has been active in organizations for social and political change, working as a teacher and as a labor organizer, managing anti-poverty programs in Washington, D.C., serving as community organizer and catalyst for change in Boston and San Francisco, as well as other communities. He has appeared on countless radio and television programs as a speaker against racism. McDew recently retired from Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis, MN, where his classes in the history of the civil rights movement, African-American history, and in social and cultural awareness were always oversubscribed.  He served faithfully on the SNCC Legacy Project Board, never missing a meeting.  He is survived by his daughter Eva.

 

Read McDew's obituary in The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/obituaries/charles-mcdew-79-tactician-for-student-civil-rights-group-dies.html

Read McDew's obituary in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

http://www.startribune.com/obituaries/detail/0000251613/?fullname=charles-frederick-mcdew

Listen to an oral history interview with Chuck McDew:

Clifford A. Vaughs  1937-2016

Clifford A. Vaughs . . . civil rights activist, award-winning photographer and independent filmmaker, designer and builder of the iconic Captain America and Billy bikes and Associate Producer for the film Easy Rider, retired V.P. The Chosen Few MC, jazz lover, one-time manager of the Buddy Miles Band, and long-time single-handed sailer and adventurer died Saturday, July 2, at 8:00 p.m. at his home in Templeton, California, where he lived with his "other half" and mate Daniella Sapriel. He leaves behind four sons, two daughters, and grandchildren. Cliff was a SNCC Field Secretary 1963-65, and a noted photojournalist.  More information will be forthcoming as to a "Celebration of Life" planned for a later date in the Los Angeles area.

 

Cornelius J. Jones of Mendenhall, MS died October 11, 2018 at the age of 74.  Born in Pennsylvania, CJ (as we was known) came to Mississippi in the early 60's , attended Tougaloo College and later Tuskegee University, majoring in economics.  He helped organize the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights  in Alabama.  He served as a  SNCC Field Secretary at Tuskegee and in Lowndes County.  CJ later worked with the Mendenhall Ministries and Voice of Calvary Ministries. He marched in the 1965 Selma-Montgomery March, and the Meredith March of 1966.  CJ leaves his wife, three children, and three grandchildren.    Last year CJ was honored with an award from the Mississippi Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement for his lifetime of service.

 

 A native of Washington, DC, Cynthia joined the Nonviolent Action Group while a student at Howard University.  She worked as a SNCC Field Secretary, and was project director in Bolivar County, MS during the 1964 Summer Project.  In 1965 she directed a SNCC organizing project in Greene County, Alabama.  Later she returned to D.C. and worked for NASA.She died in 2014.  See https://snccdigital.org/people/cynthia-washington/

 

 

 

October 12, 1932 – August 19, 2017

 

Dick Gregory, a pioneering force of comedy in the 1960s who parlayed his career as a stand-up comic into a life of social and political activism, died Saturday of heart failure. He was 84.   Although he was never on SNCC staff, he was an early and long-time friend of SNCC and the civil rights movement.

 

Gregory used his  fame to become a civil-rights activist and opponent of the Vietnam War. He made friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X; honored a request from Medgar Evers to speak at a voter-registration rally in Jackson, Miss.; raised money for SNCC; delivered food to NAACP offices in the South; marched in Selma, Ala.; got shot while trying to keep the peace during the 1965 Watts riots; was arrested in Washington for protesting Vietnam; performed benefit shows for the Congress of Racial Equality; and traveled to Tehran, Iran, in 1980 to attempt to negotiate the hostages' release.

Gregory ran for mayor of Chicago in 1967 but lost to Richard Daley, then entered the race for U.S. president a year later. A write-in candidate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket, he received some 47,000 votes.  Gregory performed in Jackson, Mississippi at the 50th Anniversary Conference of Mississippi Freedom Summer.

 

In the winter of 1963, white authorities cut off commodities in Leflore and Sunflower countieswhere SNCC was making its biggest effort in Mississippi. The optional federal government program permitted poor counties to receive surplus government food or “commodities” for distribution to the poor. In the sharecropped cotton plantation land of the Delta, this food was vital to making it through the winter.

SNCC put out a national call for food. When Dick Gregory heard about the surplus food cut-off, he chartered a plane and sent 14,000 pounds of food to Greenwood. This was a first step that would lead the renowned comedian into increasingly deeper involvement with the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Both the surplus food cutoff and Gregory’s relief, noted Bob Moses, enabled many for the first time to see clearly “the connection between political participation and food on their table.” SNCC staff handed out food and voter registration forms.

In the spring, SNCC organizers invited Gregory to speak at a mass meeting in Greenwood. The community had never heard a Black man speak publicly in the manner that Gregory did. He made fun of the police, calling them, “a bunch of illiterate whites who couldn’t even pass the test themselves.” Gregory also called out the local preachers reluctant to involve themselves with the Movement and said, “These handkerchief heads don’t realize this area is going to break … If you have to pray in the street, it’s better than worshiping with a man who is less than a man!” The meeting erupted into laughter and applause. A week later, 31 ministers signed a statement in support of the voting rights drive.

Gregory did not flinch from putting himself in the path of danger. Once in a mass meeting in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a bomb was tossed through a window, and people started rushing towards the door. Gregory grabbed the microphone, and said, “Where are you going? The man who threw it is outside God’s house. The Man who’s supposed to save you lives here.” Someone picked up the bomb and threw it back outside, and the meeting continued. The Clarksdale police chief denied that his officers were responsible for the bomb, “If one of our men threw that bomb,” he said “you’d better believe it would have gone off.”

Gregory was constantly speaking to white authorities in startling, unexpected ways. During the protests in Greenwood, a police officer dragged Gregory across the street. “Thanks a million,” Gregory told him, “up north police don’t escort me across the street.” On another occasion, he wagged his finger in the faces of white policemen gathered in front of the county courthouse. “Who you calling nigger,” he told them, “You ain’t nothing but niggers yourselves. Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger,” he continued while still wagging his finger.

Gregory continued working with SNCC throughout the sixties. He traveled with SNCC’s Freedom Singers and included jokes about the South in his act. In his memoir, Gregory wrote, “I really hadn’t planned to lead the marching [in Greenwood], but looking at those beautiful faces ready to die for freedom, I knew I couldn’t do less.”  (With thanks to the SNCC Digital Gateway and The Hollywood Reporter).

Donald P. Stone

1935-September 13, 2019

 

We are saddened to announce the death of former SNCC staffer Donald  P. Stone in Atlanta, GA on Friday September 13, 2019.  Stone was a pivotal part of the SNCC Atlanta Vine City Project in 1966-68,   Born in Alabama and a Morehouse graduate, Stone was working in the post office when he joined the Atlanta Student Movement in 1960.  He later served two years in jail for demonstrating at a selective service recruitment office.  For more about Don Stone  see  https://snccdigital.org/people/donald-stone/

October 8, 1943 - October 24, 2018

 

Ivanhoe Donaldson  died April 3, 2016 in Washington, DC.  He was born in 1941 in New York City, the son of a policeman.  He graduated from Michigan State University, where he became involved in the civil rights movement by delivering food to Mississippi sharecroppers during the winter of 1962-63, driving a truck loaded with supplies from Michigan to Clarksdale, MS.  He soon began working full-time as a SNCC Field Secretary. Read More

1943-2019

Former Director of the Arkansas SNCC Project 1963-1966, James O. Jones passed away June 1, 2019 at his home in Austin TX.  He was 76 years old.  Jim was the second director of Arkansas SNCC.   A native of Willisville, Arkansas, he was one of the original  nine students (along with Ruthie Buffington) who got expelled from Arkansas AM&N College (now Univ of Arkansas, Pine Bluff). Later on he completed his BA at the Univ of Arkansas (Fayetteville; main campus). After SNCC Jim went on to work for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Atlanta and Epes, Alabama, and the Texas Dept. of Agriculture.  For more about James O. Jones, see SNCC Digital at https://snccdigital.org/people/jim-jones/

 

 

Actor, playwrite, director and cultural activist John M. O'Neal died at his home in New Orleans, today, age 78.  John became a SNCC Field Secretary after his graduation from Southern Illinois University.  He worked for SNCC in Georgia and Mississippi, and was a coordinator of the Mississippi Freedom School program in the summer of 1964.  John, along with two colleagues, founded the Free Southern Theater, an integrated touring repertory company which  gave voice to African-American actors, playwrites, directors, and audiences.    After his work with SNCC, he made his home in New Orleans and founded Junebug Productions, Inc, a cultural orgnaization.   In addition, O'Neal was a visiting professor in theater at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, from 1989-1992, where he taught playwriting.   He was a member of the Actor's Equity Association, the Dramatist Guild, and a founding member of American Festival Project, a national coalition of performing arts organizations.

 

Watch John O'Neal at https://vimeo.com/80959243?fbclid=IwAR0H3cjX1jQnfRfLPv6irBwYuM8OWJkDcpn-sLpgqW-VvPNaWqo1jxQbe2Y

Read more about John O'Neal at:  http://amistadresearchcenter.tulane.edu/archon/?p=creators/creator&id=111

Read the New York Times obituary at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/obituaries/john-oneal-dead.html

Article in Facing South: https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/03/remembering-john-oneal-storytelling-change

John O'Neal performing as Junebug Jabbo Jones

Julian Bond, Vice-Chair of the SNCC Legacy Project, died on August 15, 2015 at his vacation home in Florida.  He was 75.  He was a long-time resident of Washington, DC. Read More

Julius Lester, SNCC photographer 1966-1968, died January 18, 2018 surrounded by his family in Belchertown, Massachusetts.  He was 78 years old.  A renowned author, musician, activist and photographer who taught for three decades at the University of Massachusetts, 

Lester was born in St. Louis on Jan. 27, 1939. He grew up in Kansas City, Kan., the son of a minister, and later Nashville, Tenn., where in 1960 he received an English degree from the historically black Fisk University.

Lester was a true polymath. He wrote dozens of critically acclaimed books, for children — including a retelling of the Br’er Rabbit tales and an exploration of slavery, “To Be a Slave” — as well as nonfiction and novels for adults. He was also a musician, and his very first book was a guide to the 12-string guitar, co-written with legendary folk singer Pete Seeger.

 

Click here to hear Julius Lester talk and sing:

http://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-julius-lester-folk-singer/

In 1961, Lester moved to New York City, where he taught banjo and guitar, performed as a folk singer, hosted a talk radio show on WBAI and hosted a television show on WNET.

It was while he was a folk singer in New York City that Lester, in 1964, decided to travel to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer.

“Going to Mississippi in ’64, you knew you could be arrested, you knew you could be killed, you knew you could be injured. And so it’s not something you did lightly, not something you did because it was going to be fun,” Lester told PBS in a 2014 interview. “But there was this feeling inside of me that it was just something I had to do.”

In addition to using his musical gifts at mass meetings and rallies, Lester also chronicled the civil rights movement as a photographer working with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Those photographs were later part of a civil rights exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution, and his larger body of work has also been featured in solo shows at many galleries. 

 

Click here to learn more about Julius Lester's work with SNCC:

https://snccdigital.org/people/julius-lester/

 

In 1971, Lester became a professor of Afro-American studies at UMass Amherst, where he remained until his retirement in 2003. During his time at UMass, he won the Distinguished Teacher’s Award, the Faculty Fellowship Award for Distinguished Research and Scholarship and the Chancellor’s Medal. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education named Lester the state’s Professor of the Year in 1988.

 

Journey to Judaism

When he was a child, Lester learned that his great-grandfather Adolph Altschul was Jewish, and this knowledge was one of the factors in his conversion to Judaism in the early 1980s. In 1988, he became a professor of Judaic studies at UMass, and he served as a lay religious leader of Beth El Synagogue in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, for around a decade. Lester chronicled his journey to Judaism in his book “Lovesong: Becoming a Jew.”

In his retirement, Lester lived in Belchertown with his wife, Milan Sabatini.

 Lester was active on Facebook, where his page has nearly 3,000 followers. It was on Facebook that his daughter Lian Amaris kept the world updated about his condition in his last days, and where she announced that he had died.

Facebook also provided a platform for Lester, a man of many words, to write a public statement to the world on Jan. 3 in what would be his final post.

In it, Lester reflects on his health, as well as his gratitude for the space that his Facebook page provided for him to continue to teach.

“Again, I am so grateful to all of you who shared so much wonderful energy with me, indeed who lavished wonderful energy on me,” were the last words he published, before signing off with a take care of yourselves and much love.

 

Julius is survived by his wife, five children, and eight grandchildren.

 

Read More

February 24, 1940 - October 25, 2018

Mattie Bivins Dennis at the 50th Anniversary of Freedom Summer 1964.

On a CBS national broadcast, Mattie Bivins Dennis told the country what registering to vote in her hometown, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was really like. “I was thinking as I walked along the dirt road in front of my house about the dust which would be on my shoes and the scars from the rocks. And that if we had enough registered voters–Negro registered voters, that is–this wouldn’t be a problem at all. Because the streets would be paved.” It was September 26, 1962, and only 12 of the 7,500 voting-aged Blacks in Forrest County, Mississippi were actually registered to vote.   For Bivins, civil rights work was a family affair. She and her relatives formed a web of local activists in the local Freedom Struggle. As a child, Bivins watched her father D.K. Bivins fight for the vote alongside farmer and NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer. Her cousins Dorie and Joyce Ladner were integral to SNCC’s organizing in Palmer’s Crossing, a proud and resilient Black community just south of the Hattiesburg line. This local network and support system inspired Bivins and others to keep on despite fierce white resistance to their efforts.   In 1962, when Hollis Watkins introduced Mattie to Bob Moses, she was ready to jump on board with SNCC. She went with fellow Tougaloo College students Colia Liddell and Dorie Ladner to Sunflower County to register people to vote. For a time she managed the SNCC/COFO office in Greenville, Mississippi.

Dave Dennis, the only CORE organizer in Mississippi at the time, came to Hattiesburg, and met this community of local people changing the world around them. There he met Mattie, and soon he and Bivins married, forming an important partnership rooted in organizing for the Movement as well as love.   In 1963, Bivins went back to Tougaloo and kept fighting against segregation and police brutality. And, despite the financial stress that Bivins, Dennis, and all movement workers dealt with everyday, they shared what they had to keep the Movement family alive.   Mattie Bivins Dennis is survived by her daughter, Erika Young and son-in-law, Brian Young. Her grandchildren Jalen Young and Julian Young, and former husband David Dennis.

Mildred Forman Page passed away in Chicago on March 19, 2018.  She came to the Atlanta SNCC office with her husband James Forman, and worked as a SNCC Field Secretary.  One of her duties was managing the SNCC Freedom Singers.  Later she returned to Chicago, remarried and raised her three children.  She was active with the Chicago Friends of SNCC and the Chicago SNCC History Project of which she was a founding member.

Read more here: http://cafsncc.org/Chicago_SNCC_History_Project/Mildred_Forman_Page,_Secretary.html

Read more here: http://www.crmvet.org/mem/formanm.htm

 

SNCC Project Director in Alabama, passed on July 17, 2015 at his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, age 74.   While a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Silas first came to Selma in June of 1964 as a member of the Selma Literacy Project and facilitated Malcolm X’s visit to Selma in early 1965.  Read More

 

SNCC Photographer Tamio Wakayama passed away on March 23, 2018 in Vancouver, B.C. Canada, at age 77.  As a child he and his parents spent time in a World War II internment camp for Japanese-Canadians.  He joined SNCC in 1963 and soon was working as an official SNCC staff photographer.  After Freedom Summer, Tamio returned to Canada where he organized a Friends of SNCC Chapter.  He was the author of six books, including Dream of Riches: The Japanese Canadians 1877-1977, a photographic reconstruction of the memory of the Nikkei community,

See Tamio speak about photographing during the civil rights movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4POLTG4_U00

Read  more about Tamio at https://snccdigital.org/people/tamio-wakayama/

 

Unita Blackwell, the sharecropper who later became the first black woman mayor in the state of Mississippi and advised six U.S. presidents, died May 13, 2019 at age 86.

She served as a project director and field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), helping organize voter drives for African Americans across Mississippi.
Her son Jeremiah Blackwell Jr. told Mississippi Today his mother died Monday morning at a hospital in Biloxi after a long battle with dementia.

William “Winky” Hall grew up in Harlem and attended Howard University, where he first met fellow Civil Rights activists Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Ture) and Cleve Sellars, among others.  His early Civil Rights experience took place along Route 40 in Maryland, demonstrating at restaurants in Baltimore and walking along picket lines in Washington DC with Julius Hobson and fellow classmates from the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG).  In April 1964, he went to the eastern shore of Maryland to work with Gloria Richardson-Dandridge.  Much later, he went to Atlanta to become a campus traveler for SNCC in Alabama, recruiting other college kids to SNCC projects in Alabama.  He was based in Selma and worked with Dr. King, James Bevil, Andy Young and others in SCLC.

 

He was on the second and third marches across the Edmond Petits Bridge.  As it turned out, the first march was lead by John Lewis, the second by Ralph Abernathy and the third by Dr. King.  It was the third march that was permitted to continue onto Montgomery; the others were turned backed.  Throughout the march, he traveled to college campuses recruiting kids to join.  Bill Hall was one of the SNCC leaders that remained after the march that demonstrated in front of the capitol with Jim Forman and college kids from Montgomery State and Tuskegee Institute.  He was beaten and arrested in Montgomery with Jim Forman and several others.

 

In the fall of 1965, he returned to New York City.  He wanted to take his grass roots organizing experience home.  Once there, he became involved in housing and school issues.  In New York, he began to focus on Africa – demonstrating in front of the South Africa Consulate Office in New York protesting the treatment of black people and the Sharpesville massacre.  He was arrested several times in New York protesting at the South Africa Consulate Office.  On one occasion, he was jailed protesting apartheid along with Julian and James Bond, Jim Forman, John Lewis, Cleve Sellers and Willie Ricks.  He recalled being greatful that Harry Belafonte and Sidney Portier bailed them out.

 

In December 1967, he joined Stokely Carmichael in Washington DC.  At the same time, he applied for admission to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. – sensing contradictions in New York City’s school system.  In the 1960s, in New York City, only four African Americans had supervisory licenses in education.  This license qualified one to serve as a school principal in New York City.  It was hard to imagine that a school system with 1,000 school buildings had only four black people with the qualifications to serve as school principals.  As he recalled, there was only one who actually served in such a capacity.  To his knowledge, no Hispanics had any such licenses.

 

On a brighter note, he was Stokely Carmichael’s best man when he married Miriam Makeba, and they all lived together briefly in Washington DC – until September 1968, when he left to go to Harvard.  “I initially went to get a Masters in Education,” he wrote. “But I later decided to enter the doctoral program and much later decided to complement the credentials with a Masters in Business.  During my time at Harvard, I managed to talk Cleve into coming to the Ed School.  By the time I left Harvard, I had four graduate degrees, a wife, a new son, a daughter from a previous marriage and a corporate job on Park Avenue.”  In a sort of homecoming, Bill Hall later went on to become superintendent of schools in Harlem.  He also served as school superintendent in Hartford, CT and New Brunswick, NJ.

 

Over the years, he also worked for investment banks Lehman Brothers, Chemical Bank, Manufacturers Hanover, etc.  Additionally, he served as CFO for the District of Columbia, before finally reigniting his passion for education—teaching finance on the university level at Philadelphia area colleges and universities.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Submitted by Diallo Hall.

 

 

 William Porter, 76, son of the late John and Lizzie Mae Porter of Albany, GA, went to be with the Lord on Friday, Aug. 24, 2018. Known to family as “Bill” and to friends as “Porter,” he was born on Nov. 3, 1941, the second oldest of eight children. He attended local schools and spent two years at Albany State College, when the civil rights struggle drew him into voter registration efforts.

A participant in the 1961 Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities, he left school in 1962 to devote his energies to become a soldier in the cause of freedom. He became Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) coordinator of Citizenship Schools in the area to teach people how to pass the literacy tests on their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution in order to vote. He joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (known familiarly as “Snick”), 1962-1967, serving under Chairmen Charles McDew and John Lewis as chief file clerk; project director in Gadsden and Birmingham, AL; southern fundraiser; campus coordinator; scholarship coordinator; conference coordinator; assistant director of the research library; and Atlanta Office manager.

Some of the documents he created and accumulated are known as the “William Porter Papers,” part of the SNCC Archives at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change in Atlanta, GA.

Later, while obtaining his B.S. degree in Business from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Bill met the love of his life, Violet Brodie, and married her, stating in the wedding ceremony that he was also, in effect, marrying her two children, Eileen and Anthony, to show his unconditional fatherly love for them. Bill yearned to be a minister and gave his first sermon at Bethel AME Church in Iowa City. The family moved to Washington, DC, where Bill and Violet were blessed with a son, William Robin Porter. Bill was a correctional officer in the juvenile detention system, and lived in Maryland before moving to Henry County, GA in 2008. Possessing a gentle demeanor with a steadfast determination to do whatever he set out to do, Bill was known for his love of “throwing down” in the kitchen with his down-home culinary skills.

 He leaves to cherish his memory his wife, Violet Porter of McDonough, GA; a daughter, Eileen Leona Brodie, of the Atlanta, GA area; two sons, Anthony Mason of McDonough, and William Robin Porter of Maryland; and eight grandchildren.

 

 

                           1937-2016