Sam Shirah
1943 – 1980
Sam Curtis Shirah was born in 1943 in Troy, Alabama, where his father was a Methodist minister. While at Birmingham Southern College, Sam became involved in the local civil rights movement. He left college and joined SNCC as a white student organizer. According to his sister, in April of 1963 Sam learned of the murder in Attala, Alabama, of a white postal worker, William Moore, who had traveled alone on foot from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to protest segregation. Moore had planned to end his march in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 1, 1963, Sam joined nine other volunteers to finish the march that Moore had started. Upon arrival at the Alabama State line, Sam and the other volunteers were arrested and jailed.
After his release from jail in Alabama, Sam participated in civil rights activities first in Alabama and then in Danville, Virginia, where he was arrested on vagrancy charges. The removal of a part of his kidney in 1966 was a consequence of beatings during his incarceration there. From Danville Sam returned to Alabama to begin his work as campus activist. He was in Birmingham when the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church resulted in the death of four black children; Sam attended their funeral.
In December of 1963, Sam proposed a program to SNCC called the White Community Project, or White Folks Project, to register poor whites to vote and help them to understand the similarities of their plights with that of African-Americans. Three sites in Mississippi were selected for this 1964 summer project, and Sam became active in the Biloxi area.
In April of 1963 Sam learned of the murder in Attala, Alabama, of a white postal worker, William Moore, who had traveled alone on foot from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to protest segregation. Moore had planned to end his march in Jackson, Mississippi. On May 1, 1963, Sam joined nine other volunteers to finish the march that Moore had started. Upon arrival at the Alabama State line, Sam and the other volunteers were arrested and jailed.
After his release from jail in Alabama, Sam participated in civil rights activities first in Alabama and then in Danville, Virginia, where he was arrested on vagrancy charges. The removal of a part of his kidney in 1966 was a consequence of beatings during his incarceration there. From Danville Sam returned to Alabama to begin his work as campus activist. He was in Birmingham when the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church resulted in the death of four black children; Sam attended their funeral.
In December of 1963, Sam proposed a program to SNCC called the White Community Project, or White Folks Project, to register poor whites to vote and help them to understand the similarities of their plights with that of African-Americans. Three sites in Mississippi were selected for this 1964 summer project, and Sam became Director of the Southern Students Organizing Committee project in Biloxi, MS.
Sam Shirah resigned from SNCC in 1964 and volunteered for the Southern Mountain Project in Kentucky under the auspices of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF). He later worked as a labor organizer with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
Sam died in New York January 11, 1980.
Photo l-r: James Forman, Marion Barry, Sam Shirah. Photo by Danny Lyon.