Building the Foundations of a Movement 2010

8/7/2019 Building the Foundations of a Movement 2010

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Supplemental Readings forSan Francisco Freedom School 2010

Building the Foundations

of a Movement

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Willie B. Wazir Peacock.........................................2

MOUNG BAYOU...................................................4

BLACK CHURCHES............................................5

YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN

ASSOCIATION......................................................6

HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL........................6HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND

UNIVERSITIES.....................................................7

Black Leaders..........................................................8


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Willie B. Wazir Peacock

SNCC 1960-66 Interview on Crmvet.org website

I was born in the small town of Charleston, in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi-the same county whereEmmett Till was lynched in 1955. While going to school there, one of my brothers was jailed and, although ajuvenile, the authorities would not release him to our parents. The policy then was to make such prisonersclean the streets, which became humiliating for a youth when his fellow students walked by. A plantation

owner offered to get my brother released if my father would share-crop for him. So one day I came homefrom school to be moved I didn't know where, until I found out I would be living on that man's plantation.But the owner broke his promise and made no effort to get my brother released.

Just then I was reading about slavery in school and I saw slavery first hand on that plantation. This had apowerful effect on my life and I made several attempts to run away. The first time, the owner's son saw meand took me back to the plantation, but I succeeded the second time. For a year I didn't contact my parents. Itwas a tactic to make them leave the plantation; I thought they would see the family was falling apart there.

Finally they left the plantation and found me in Grenada, Miss. I decided to return home and saw theimportance of going to school. My greatest motivation was to do something practical about the conditions

faced by black people, my people.

I finished high school and won a 4-year scholarship to Rust College in Holly Springs, Miss. In 1960, while atRust, I had the first opportunity to express my activism. We all knew about the sit-ins by black collegestudents in Raleigh, North Carolina and some Rust students wanted to show our solidarity. The balcony ofthe movie theater in Holly Springs was segregated so we organized a student boycott of the theater. We triedto get the students at a nearby industrial college to join us, but the president made them go to the theater andbreak the boycott.

From the boycott we moved on to voter registration in the town. That was too radical for some collegeofficials, so they had Medgar Evers come to organize an NAACP youth chapter on campus. They made sure

to exclude me and my group from this meeting, and we were never included in the chapter. But we continuedto keep the boycott alive and eventually the theater closed, rather than desegregate.

In fall, 1960, we met our first SNCC representative, Jim Bevel, when he came to Rust with Sam Block andDewey Green, Jr. We organized other students to meet with them and later Dion Diamond, also from SNCC(who was arrested on charges from Louisiana and therefore couldn't return). Then came Frank Smith fromAtlanta, who moved to Holly Springs in early 1962. I worked on voter registration all over northeasternMississippi and also organized a credit union with Frank until I graduated from Rust in August.

I was supposed to start medical school that fall and went home to Charleston. Bob Moses and Amzie Moorecame to see me because help was needed in Sunflower County. I left the same day for Amzie's home in

Cleveland, to the disappointment of my mother and with the blessings of my father. When we arrived aroundmidnight, we got a call from Sam Block at the SNCC office in Greenwood, who was there with LawrenceGuyot and Lavaughn Brown. He said there was a group of white men with bats and chains outside thebuilding. Bob advised Sam to escape and that we were on the way. We got there about an hour later andfound the office had been ransacked. I remember that Bob turned on a noisy fan (it was hot) and we went tosleep in the office.

The next morning Sam, Guyot and Brown showed up. I cut a stencil with a stylus and we mimeographed aleaflet to let people know we were still there and were not "outside agitators" who would start something andbe gone overnight, as the propaganda said. After that, with no place to stay, we would all pile up on the floorat Amzie Moore's house and go over to the Greenwood office to work during the day.

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Things began to move very fast after this. The Voter Education Project (VEP) had been privately funded, andwe hd to organize for it.. We pulled together the Council of Federated Organizations (SNCC, CORE, SCLCand the NAACP) at a church in Clarksdale, Miss., with Bob Moses as COFO director. That night most of usgot arrested for violating curfew.

In the summer of 1962 we were working towns all over the Delta, sometimes several in the same day, andstaying at Amzie's house. One day Jim Forman of SNCC came from Atlanta when we were working in

Indianola. I guess we looked hungry because he asked when we had eaten last, and we couldn't remember.So he went to a local cafe and managed to get some food and we ate.

More people came and settled in Ruleville-SNCC people from Mississippi and Charlie Cobb from Boston.That's when we met Fannie Lou Hamer. One day we took a busload of people from Ruleville to Indianola toregister, and were harassed on the way back by police who said the bus was the wrong color. That night wehad a mass meeting, where we learned that Mrs. Hamer and her family had been evicted from the plantationwhere she had worked many years because she refused to have her name removed from the voter rolls as theowner wanted. A few nights later, several homes in Ruleville were shot into by people trying to hit Mrs.Hamer. By this time, Sam Block and I had found a brave woman-Hatti Mae Miller-who let us stay at herehome so we didn't have to go back to Cleveland every night to sleep at Amzie's.

The black community in Ruleville and Greenwood had begun to open up to us, so our work intensified. As aresult, we spent more time at our individual projects and then meet once a week with Bob Moses to write ourreports and have workshops. In early 1963 we had a breakthrough. One church opened up to us. More andmore people went to register to vote; one day 126 people attempted to register. Unable to believe this,Randolph Blackwell, Bob Moses and Jimmy Travis came from Atlanta to see for themselves. That night theyinsisted on leaving despite a warning from others who had been chased earlier by a group of whites. Theywere attacked and Jimmy Travis was shot and ended up at the university hospital in Jackson.

Wiley Branton, VEP director, gave a statement to the press without consulting us in which he said that,because of the shooting, Greenwood would be made a testing-ground for the civil rights movement. This

made it necessary for SNCC workers in other Mississippi projects to move to Greenwood that summer;including celebrities like comedian Dick Gregory. Many mass meetings and demonstrations were held; morearrests and racist attacks took place. For the first time we had to make mass bail for people, which theNational Council of Churches helped to provide. Some spent as much as 40 days in jail.

In fall 1963, discussion began of having what became the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. At the firstmeeting, in Greenville, everyone voted against it, mainly though not only because of the danger (the projectwould bring many white people who could not be hidden in the black community as we were) and alsobecause too often black people would agree to act because whites were asking but there would be no realconsciousness-raising or commitment.

In spring 1964 Bob Moses, who had opposed the project, now supported it as did Aaron Henry of theNAACP and Rev. Ed King. Bob argued that the project would bring national attention to the plight of blackMississippians. I continued to oppose it and did not participate because people felt I would "sabotage" it. Inretrospect, I can understand that position because I was one of SNCC's key organizers in the state and hadinfluence with the people. So I spent the summer between New York, for medical treatment, and Madison,Wisconsin, where SNCC's Freedom Singers performed and some including my brother became ill.

That fall I enrolled in graduate school at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama because I still hoped to attendmedical school. There I got involved with TIAL (Tuskegee Institute Advancement League) and asked to bean advisor. I came to know many of the students, like: Wendell Paris and his wonderful mother, AnnAnthony, Gwen Patton, George Nimrod, Simuel Schultz, and Sammy Younge, Jr. We began going to Selma

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regularly. I worked with Sammy Younge, the Tuskegee student later murdered by a racist. Sammy was onfire, especially about working in Macon County. Sammy and others also went to Ruleville to help Mrs.Hamer. All over the South, we each had our own base but always traveled to help when needed. This is anexample of the history of SNCC in Alabama that has yet to be written.

When school ended, I returned to Mississippi and wrote a proposal to do a community cultural revivalprogram. I saw people alienated from their own culture, needing to have it revived. A foundation funded theprogram and we did several festivals including a 3-day event in Milestone that was covered in Ebony and

Downbeat magazine. But problems with the foundation and others who sought to control my work left mediscouraged about how to continue. News of the murder of Sammy Younge, with whom I had been veryclose, was the final blow and I left Mississippi for California.

I first lived in Los Angeles and worked with the Neighborhood Adult Participation Project. It was intendedto bring blacks and Latinos together, but competitive local politicians got in the way. Then I did advisorywork with some of the founding members of the Brown Berets and other Chicanos in East L.A. In 1970 Ireturned to Mississippi, where I participated in various non-profit projects while working fulltime as ahemodialysis technician at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. I married there, had a family, andthen returned to California in 1989.

Living in the East Bay, I have worked 10 years with Stepping Stones Growth Center, an organization thatserves developmentally disabled children and adults. My duties there are in the independent living servicesdivision. I also worked for a while as an herbalist and acupressure therapist, in my own business.

MOUNG BAYOU

Mound Bayou traces its origin to people from the community of Davis Bend, Mississippi. The latter wasstarted in the 1820s by the planter Joseph E. Davis, who intended to create a model slave community on hisplantation. Davis was influenced by the utopian ideas of Robert Owen. He encouraged self-leadership in theslave community, provided a higher standard of nutrition and health and dental care, and allowed slaves tobecome merchants.

In the aftermath of the American Civil War, Davis Bend became an autonomous free community when Davissold his property to former slave Benjamin Montgomery, who had run a store and been a prominent leader atDavis Bend. The prolonged agricultural depression, falling cotton prices and white hostility in the regioncontributed to the economic failure of Davis Bend.

Isaiah T. Montgomery led the founding of Mound Bayou in 1887 in wilderness in northwest Mississippi. Thebottomlands of the Delta were a relatively undeveloped frontier, and blacks had a chance to clear land andacquire ownership in such frontier areas.

Mound Bayou was an all black town in the Yazoo Delta in Northwest Mississippi. It was founded .bytwelve pioneers from Davis Bend, a fledgling black colony impacted by falling agricultural prices, natural

disasters, and hostile race relations. This migration movement was led by Isaiah Montgomery, formerpatriarch of Davis Bend. Purchased from the Louisville, New Orleans, and Texas Railroad (L, NO & T),Mound Bayou bordered a new rail line between Memphis and Vicksburg. From 1890 to 1915, Mound Bayouwas a land of promise for African Americans. Encapsulated in this promise were self-help, race pride,economic opportunity, and social justice, in a self-segregated community designed for blacks to haveminimum contact with whites until integration was a viable option to black freedom.

By 1900 two-thirds of the owners of land in the bottomlands were black farmers. With high debt andcontinuing agricultural problems, most of them lost their land and by 1920 were sharecroppers.

Montgomery led the village through the 1920s. As cotton prices fell, the town suffered a severe economic

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decline in the 1920s and 1930s.

Mound Bayou had a U.S. Post Office, six churches, banks, stores, and several public and private schools. Itseconomy depended on the production of cotton, timber, and corn, and being an agent for the L, NO & TRailroad. Politically, Mound Bayous mayor Isaiah Montgomery protected it from white violence throughpolitical accommodation. Montgomery also ensured Mound Bayous growth by working closely with BookerT. Washington after 1900, through his lieutenant Charles Banks. Socially, Mound Bayou had anexceptionally low crime rate, high morals (i.e., no gambling or sale of alcohol), and everyone had to be a

useful member of the community. Through outlets like the towns newspaper, The Demonstrator (1900),Mound Bayou promoted education as an essential path to community survival, in particular vocationaleducation in scientific agriculture through the Mound Bayou Normal and Industrial Institute. From 1907 to1915, this infrastructure, along with Mound Bayous function as a railroad center, allowed it to flourish andgrow to 8,000 people by 1911. Its noticeable decline occurred during the Great Migration period (1915-1930), in which cotton prices fell, Booker T. Washington passed away, and the black path towards freedomwas redirected from independent towns towards the major cities of the United States.

Shortly after a fire destroyed much of the business district, Mound Bayou began to arrive in 1942 after theopening of the Taborian Hospital by the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, afraternal organization. For more than two decades, the hospital provided low-cost health care to thousands of

blacks in the Mississippi Delta. The chief surgeon was Dr. T.R.M. Howard who eventually became one ofthe wealthiest blacks in the state. Howard owned a plantation of more than one thousand acres, home-construction firm, small zoo and built the first swimming pool for blacks in Mississippi. In 1952, MedgarEvers moved to Mound Bayou to sell insurance for Howard's Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company.Howard also introduced Evers to civil rights through his Regional Council of Negro Leadership whichorganized service stations which refused to provide restrooms for blacks. The RNCL's annual rallies inMound Bayou between 1952 and 1955 drew crowds of ten thousand or more. During the trial of EmmettTill's alleged killers, black reporters and witnesses stayed in Howard's Mound Bayou home who gave theman armed escort to the court house in Sumner.

BLACK CHURCHES

The post Civil War years were marked by a separatist impulse as blacks exercised the right to move andgather beyond white supervision or control. They developed black churches, benevolent societies, fraternalorders and fire companies. In some areas they moved from farms into towns, as in middle Tennessee, or tocities that needed rebuilding, such as Atlanta. Black churches were the focal points of black communities,and their members' quickly seceding from white churches demonstrated their desire to manage their ownaffairs independently of white supervision. It also showed the prior strength of the "invisible church" hiddenfrom white eyes.

In 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee, with support from white colleagues of the Methodist Episcopal Church,South, more than 40 black Southern ministers, all freedmen and former slaves, met to establish the Southern-based Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), founded as

an independent branch of Methodism. They took their mostly black congregations with them. They adoptedthe Methodist Doctrine and elected their first two bishops, William H. Miles of Kentucky and Richard H.Vanderhorst of South Carolina. Within three years, from a base of about 40,000, they had grown to 67,000members, and more than 10 times that many in 50 years.

At the same time, black Baptist churches, well-established before the Civil War, continued to grow and addnew congregations. With the rapid growth of black Baptist churches in the South, in 1894 church officialsorganized a new Baptist association, the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.. These churches blendedelements from underground churches with elements from freely established black churches.

Black preachers provided leadership, encouraged education and economic growth, and were often the

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primary link between the black and white communities. The black church established and/or maintainedthe first black schools and encouraged community members to fund these schools and other public

services. For most black leaders, the churches always were connected to political goals of advancing therace.

Since the male hierarchy denied them opportunities for ordination, middle-class women in the black churchasserted themselves in other ways: they organized missionary societies to address social issues. Thesesocieties provided job training and reading education, worked for better living conditions, raised money for

African missions, wrote religious periodicals, and promoted Victorian ideals of womanhood, respectability,and racial uplift

YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION

During its long history the YWCA has contributed to women in a variety of ways. The YWCA has played akey role in many of the major movements in the U.S. in race relations, labor union representation, andthrough developing and implementing empowerment programs for women.* 1890s: YMCA opened the First African American YWCA branch in Dayton, OH and the first YWCA forNative American women in Oklahoma. Years later, in 1909, the YWCA began offering bilingual instructionto help immigrant women.* 1915: The YWCA held the first interracial conference in the south, which was conducted in Louisville,

Kentucky.* 1930s: YWCA worked towards desegregation and to protect African American civil rights in theU.S. It actively encouraged YWCA members to openly speak out against lynching and mob violence

against black Americans.

* 1940s: In 1942 the YWCA opened its services to Japanese American women and girls incarcerated inWorld War II Relocation Centers. And in 1946 the YWCA adopted its Interracial Charter eight yearsbefore the United States Supreme Court decision against segregation.* 1950s: During the 1950s the U.S. YWCA sent leaders to address local villages of African countries thatwere becoming independent. The YWCA inspired and helped women establish their own leadership andpooled resources to create YWCAs in Kenya, Uganda, Rhodesia, South Africa and other regions.* 1966: Participated in Project Equality and began refusing business dealings with companies that have

discriminatory employment practices including withdrawing funds from banks that overtly participated in theSouth African Consortium.

HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL

The Highlander Folk School was originally established in Grundy County, Tennessee. When Highlander wasfounded in 1932, the United States was in the midst of the Great Depression. Workers in all parts of thecountry were met with major resistance by employers when they tried to organize labor unions, especially inthe South. Against that backdrop, Horton, West and Dombrowski created the Highlander School "to providean educational center in the South for the training of rural and industrial leaders, and for the conservation andenrichment of the indigenous cultural values of the mountains." Horton was influenced by observing ruraladult education schools in Denmark During the 1930s and 1940s, the school's main focus was labor

education and the training of labor organizers.

In the 1950s, Highlander turned its energies to the rising issues of civil rights and desegregation..Highlander worked with Esau Jenkins of Johns Island to develop a literacy program for blacks who wereprevented from registering to vote by literacy requirements. The program was replicated throughout theSouth under the name Citizenship Schools. Later the program was adopted by the Southern ChristianLeadership Conference.

The civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" was adapted (from a gospel song) by Highlander musicdirector, Zilphia Horton, wife of Myles Horton, from the singing of striking tobacco factory workers in SouthCarolina in 1946

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HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_black_collegeMost HBCUs were established after the American Civil War. However, Cheyney University ofPennsylvania, established in 1837, Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), established in 1854, and WilberforceUniversity, established in 1856, were established for blacks prior to the American Civil War.

In 1863, the Morrill Act provided for land grant colleges in each state. Some educational institutions in theNorth or West, were open to blacks since the Civil War. However, 17 Southern states generally excluded

blacks from their land grant colleges. In response, the second Morrill Act of 1890 was passed to requirestates to establish a separate land grant college for blacks if blacks were being excluded from the thenexisting land grant college. Many of the HBCUs were founded in response to the Second Morrill Act. Theseland grant schools continue to receive annual federal funding for their research, extention and outreachactivities. In 1965, the Higher Education Act of 1965 established a program for direct federal grants toHBCUs, including federal matching of private endowment contributions.

Students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) inspired legions of protestors of everyrace and gender to join the movement. By the end of March 1960, the sit-in movement had spread to morethan 55 cities in 13 states.DATE STARTED CITY HBCUs PRODUCING SIT-IN STUDENT LEADERS

Feb. 1, 1960 Greensboro, N.C. N.C. A&T UniversityFeb. 8, 1960 Durham, N.C. North Carolina College at Durham

Fayetteville, N.C. Fayetteville State Teachers College

Winston-Salem, N.C. Winston-Salem Teachers College

Feb. 9, 1960 Charlotte, N.C. Johnson C. Smith University

Concord, N.C. Barber-Scotia College

Elizabeth City, N.C. Elizabeth City State Teachers College

Henderson, N.C.

High Point, N.C.

Feb. 10, 1960 Raleigh, N.C. Saint Augustine's College

Shaw University

Feb. 11, 1960 Hampton, Va. Hampton UniversityPortsmouth, Va.

Feb. 12, 1960 Rock Hill, S.C. Clinton-Junior College

Feb. 13, 1960 Nashville, Tenn. Fisk University

Tallahassee, Fla. Florida A&M University

Feb. 14, 1960 Sumter, S.C. Morris College

Feb. 16, 1960 Salisbury, N.C. Livingstone College

Feb. 17, 1960 Chapel Hill, N.C.

Feb. 18, 1960 Charleston, S.C.

Shelby, N.C.

Feb. 19, 1960 Chattanooga, Tenn.

Feb. 20, 1960 Richmond, Va. Virginia Union University

Feb. 22, 1960 Baltimore, Md. Coppin State Teachers College

Frankfort, Ky. State Normal School for Colored Persons

Feb. 24, 1960 Montgomery, Ala. Alabama State College

Orangeburg, S.C. Clafin College

Feb. 26, 1960 Lexington, Ky.

Petersburg, Va. Virginia State College

Tuskegee, Ala. Tuskegee Institute

Feb. 27, 1960 Tampa, Fla.

March 2, 1960 Columbia, S.C. Allen University

Benedict College

Daytona Beach, Fla. Bethune-Cookman College

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St. Petersburg, Fla.

March 4, 1960 Houston, Texas Texas Southern University

Miami, Fla. Florida Memorial College

March 7, 1960 Knoxville, Tenn. Knoxville College

March 8, 1960 New Orleans Dillard University

Southern University

March 10, 1960 Little Rock, Ar. Arkansas Baptist College

March 11, 1960 Austin, Texas Huston-Tillotson College

Galveston, Texas

March 12, 1960 Jacksonville, Fla. Edward Waters College

March 13, 1960 San Antonio, Texas

March 15, 1960 Atlanta, Ga. Clark College

Morehouse College

Morris Brown College

Spelman College

Corpus Christi, Texas

St. Augustine, Fla.

Statesville, N.C.

March 16, 1960 Savannah, Ga. Savannah State College

March 17, 1960 New Bern, N.C.

March 19, 1960 Memphis, Tenn. Owen Junior College

Wilmington, N.C.

Arlington, Va.

March 26, 1960 Lynchburg, Va.

March 28, 1960 Baton Rouge, La. Southern University

March 29, 1960 Marshall, Texas Wiley College

March 31, 1960 Birmingham, Ala. Wenonah State Technical Institute

April 2, 1960 Danville, Va.

April 4, 1960 Darlington, S.C.

April 9, 1960 Augusta, Ga. Paine College

April 12, 1960 Norfolk, Va. Norfolk Division - Virginia State College

April 17, 1960 Biloxi, Miss.April 23, 1960 Starkville, Miss.

April 24, 1960 Charleston, S.C.

April 28, 1960 Dallas, Texas Paul Quinn College

Black Leaders

Booker Taliaferro Washington

(April 5, 1856 November 14, 1915) Washington was born into slavery to a white father and a slave motherin a rural area in southwestern Virginia. After emancipation, he worked in West Virginia in a variety ofmanual labor jobs before making his way to Hampton Roads seeking an education. He worked his waythrough Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) and attended college at

Wayland Seminary. After returning to Hampton as a teacher, in 1881 he was named as the first leader of thenew Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Ida B Wells

Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862. Her father James Wells was a carpenterand her mother was Elizabeth "Lizzie" Warrenton Wells. Both parents were slaves until freed at the end ofthe Civil War. . Wells' parents took their children's education very seriously. They wanted their children totake advantage of having the opportunity to be educated and attend school. Wells attended the Freedmen'sSchool Shaw University, now Rust College in Holly Springs. She was expelled from Rust College for herrebellious behavior and temper after confronting the President of the college. When she was 16, bothWells' parents and her 10-month old brother, Stanley, died of yellow fever during an epidemic that swept

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through the South .In 1883, Wells moved to Memphis. There she got a teaching job, and during hersummer vacations she attended summer sessions at Fisk University in Nashville, whose graduates werewell respected in the black community. She also attended LeMoyne Institute. Wells held strong politicalopinions and she upset many people with her views on women's rights. When she was 24, she wrote, "I willnot begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flatteryto retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."

W.E.B. Dubois

In 1888 Du Bois earned a degree from Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee..Du Bois entered Harvard College in the fall of 1888, having received a $250 scholarship. He earned abachelor's degree cum laude from Harvard in 1890. In 1892, he received a fellowship from the John F. SlaterFund for the Education of Freedmen to attend the University of Berlin for graduate work. While a student inBerlin, he traveled extensively throughout Europe.

James Weldon Johnson

(June 17, 1871 June 26, 1938) Johnson is remembered best for his leadership within the NAACP, as wellas for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. He was also one of the firstAfrican-American professors at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literatureand writing at Fisk University. While attending Atlanta University Johnson became known as an

influential campus speaker. In 1904 Johnson accepted a position as the treasurer of the ColoredRepublican Club started by Charles W. Anderson. A year later he became the president of the club. Hisduties as president included organizing political rallies. During 1914 Johnson became editor of the editorialpage of theNew York Age, an influential African American weekly newspaper that had supported Booker T.Washington in his propaganda struggle with fellow African American W. E. B. Du Bois during the earlytwentieth century. In the fall of 1916, .he was asked to become the national organizer for the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Opposing race riots in northern cities andthe lynchings that pervaded the South during and immediately after the end of World War I, Johnsonengaged the NAACP in mass tactics, such as a silent protest parade down New York's Fifth Avenue inwhich ten thousand African Americans took part on July 28, 1917. In 1920 Johnson was elected to managethe NAACP, the first African American to hold this position. Served as an organizer and secretary in the

NAACP from 1914 through 1930 .

A. (Asa) Philip Randolph

(April 15, 1889 May 16, 1979) was the founder of both the March on Washington Movement and theBrotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida, the second son of theRev. James William Randolph, a tailor and ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church,and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, a skilled seamstress. In 1891 the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida,which had a thriving, well-established African American community. He attended the Cookman Institutein East Jacksonville, for years the only academic high school in Florida for African Americans. Aftergraduation, Randolph worked odd jobs and devoted his time to singing, acting and reading. .. In 1914Randolph courted and married Mrs. Lucille E. Green, aHoward University graduate and entrepreneur

who shared his socialist politics. She earned enough money to support them both. In 1917 Randolph andOwen founded the Messenger with the help of the Socialist Party. It was a radical monthly magazine, whichcampaigned against lynching, opposed U.S. participation in World War I, urged African Americans to resistbeing drafted to fight for a segregated society, and recommended they join radical unions.

Bayard Rustin

Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was raised by his maternal grandparents. Rustin'sgrandmother Julia Rustin was a Quaker, was also a member of the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People (NAACP). NAACP leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and James WeldonJohnson were frequent guests in the Rustin home. In 1932, Rustin entered Wilberforce University, ahistorically black college (HBCU) in Ohio operatedby the AME Church. taking his final exams, and

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later attended Cheyney State Teachers College (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania). After completingan activist training program conducted by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Rustin movedto Harlem in 1937 Was an important advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. during the early months of theMontgomery Bus Boycott.

James Lawson

Born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, Lawson grew up in Massillon, Ohio. While a freshman at BaldwinWallace College in Berea, Ohio, he joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an organization

founded by A.J. Muste, and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an organization affiliated with FOR.Both FOR and CORE advocated nonviolent resistance to racism; CORE conducted sit-ins in some northerncities in the late 1940s and embarked on a freedom ride more than a decade before the more famous ones ofthe early 1960s. Consistent with those principles of nonviolence, Lawson declared himself a conscientiousobjector and refused to report for the draft in 1951. He served fourteen months in prison after refusing to takeeither a student or ministerial deferment.

Jo Ann Robinson(19121992) was a civil rights activist and educator in Montgomery, Alabama. Born near Culloden, Georgia,she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a publicschool teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a short time. Five years later, she

went to Atlanta, where she earned an M.A. in English at Atlanta University. She then accepted a position atAlabama State College in Montgomery. It was there that she joined the Women's Political Council, whichMary Fair Burks had founded three years earlier. In 1949, Robinson was verbally attacked by a bus driverand she decided that something had to change. In late 1950, she succeeded Burks as president of the WPCand helped focus the group's efforts on bus abuses.

E.D Nixon

E.D. Nixon led the local Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the local NAACP, the Montgomery WelfareLeague, and the Montgomery Voters League at various points in his life. His activism was a catalyst for theMontgomery Bus Boycott and its success, and was also instrumental in forming the MontgomeryImprovement Association.

Nixon was born on July 12, 1899 in Montgomery. As a boy, Nixon received about one year of formaleducation. After working in a train station baggage room, he finally became a Pullman car porter. Yearsbefore the bus boycott, Nixon had started campaigning for voting rights and civil rights for African-Americans in Montgomery. He served as an unelected advocate for the African-American community,helping individuals deal with uncooperative white office holders, policemen, and civil servants. In 1940,Nixon organized 750 African-American men to march to the Montgomery County courthouse and attempt toregister to vote. In 1954, he ran for a seat on the county Democratic Executive Committee. The next year, hequestioned the Democratic candidates to the Montgomery City Commission on their positions on civil rightsissues.

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Building the Foundations of a Movement 2010