That's when they beat me really badly, and almost hanged me that day. After that, there was not a lot of question with the early SNCC people about my commitment, but I also realized that white privilege, would lead me go back to being white at any time that I wanted to, had I chose to do so, but I made a commitment that I wouldn't, so I tried to live up to that. The documentary is airing periodically on PBS through 2010. This month he will share the life lessons he learned during the movement with a Pensacola audience. Organizing in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia, GROW helped to start the Gulf Coast Pulpwood Association. In December 1961, Bob took part in Freedom Rides and was subsequently jailed with Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Georgia. Contact him at [emailprotected] or follow him on Twitter @robinbirk. What went through my head was the similarity of my fellow white southerners acting like Nazis, because by the time we got there, they had busted all their suitcases and all the students had books. The following information is provided for citations. John Seigenthaler had been beaten in the head with a pipe and kicked her under a car for dead. As the grandson of a Klansmen, he's forced to open his eyes and come . The KKK arrives at the University to set those five white boys straight. C'est son histoire, celle d'un jeune Blanc qui se bat pour les droits des Noirs dans l'Amrique raciste des annes 1960, que le film retrace. It's about the beginning of the movement, for me, as a white southerner. The attack would lead Zellner, then a student at nearby Huntingdon College with an emerging interest in the Black freedom struggle, from an observer to a movement participant. Where: Gateway Church of Christ, 445 Creighton Road, Pensacola. We need people to know that the Civil Rights Movement was led mainly by strong women, not these men that are held up in history as the leaders of the movement. As the grandson of a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member and son of an ex-KKK Methodist preacher, Zellners potential for relatability with white southern college students made him a unique target for the lynch mobs who often terrorized SNCC travelers. Not exactly, if you consider that neither are typical white Alabamans. We're here, we're here in Montgomery. The program is being organized by The Equity Project Alliance. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense." Fill out this simple form to send an email to a friend who might enjoy this page. The script called for him to needle Zellner about being white and regard him with suspicion until Zellner proved himself, something the real McDew didnt agree to because it just wasnt true, both Brown and the real Zellner told me. The first week he entered the office in Atlanta, SNCCs then executive director, Ed King, told him to answer the phone and left to return to school. What do you hope is to take away from this, when people see this movie? We interview Son of the South stars Lucas Till and Lex Scott Davis about what they think viewers can take from the film, parallels to today, and more. They were awarded compensatory and punitive damages. He was expelled as a white from SNCC in 1967 following leader Stokely Carmichaels movement of the organization in the direction of Black Nationalism. It reminds me of the time Chuck McDew and I visited my brother and his wife in a small town near Knoxville, Tenn. McDew, an African American born in Massillon, Ohio, was fascinated by the jobs being held . Tentative Project Assignments, [1964], crmvet.org crmvet.org, Click Here to View Document TV Shows. Photo by Julia Cheng. But it didnt make the final cut. A senior paper.. This changed when one day, Robert came to know that he might have to move to Vietnam. All who were injured were charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Hes smart, top of his class, and on his way to graduate school up north. The opening credits reveal a languid montage of beautiful images of the South set to music that reminded me of that TV series with Carrol OConnor (Archie Bunker from All in the Family) from the 80s In the Heat of the Night. Yeah. At the Freedom Rides Museum: SNCC field secretary Bob Zellner meets with the Forwards Robin Washington in front of the Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. He's an extremely good actor, and he really gets it. More than once, Zellner was beaten into unconsciousness. They have a daughter named Anne Zellner, who is a lawyer at the firm 'Ryley Carlock & Applewhite' in Denver. How scary was that? For several months Zellner, McDew, and Moses ran a freedom school, Nonviolent High of Pike County, for the students who dropped out of Burglund High to protest Traviss expulsion, though the school closed when the three activists were convicted of disturbing the peace and contributing to the delinquency of minors. Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism. Thats sad and infuriating. I hope it's a young people's movie and I really hope that it comes through as a women's movie, because SNCC was led by strong women. James Zellner, an itinerant Methodist preacher and member of the Ku Klux Klan, traveled to Europe during World War II to help support the Jewish resistance to the Nazis. Beginning in the mid-sixties Bob worked on documentary and feature films, traveling to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Zellner eventually joined SCEF and help lay the groundwork for GROW there. He graduated from Huntingdon College in 1961 and that year became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as its first white field secretary. Youre going to love SNCC, she told him. Robert Zellner, in a plaid shirt, conducts a GROW workshop with workers in Laurel, Mississippi, undated, Dorothy M. and Robert Zellner Papers, WHS, The rising sentiment in 1965 that whites should organize among whites challenged Zellner. Features thousands of biographic and thematic essays on Jewish women around the world. Robert J Zellner, age 62, of Oshkosh, passed away at his home on Tuesday June 21, 2022. Until the time of Zellner attended W.S. A more interesting aspect of Zellners story to explore is why do white people have to dominate other cultures and what does it really take for a white man to disrupt a system that nourishes him? Accueil Uncategorized did bob zellner marry joanne. Jealous, Ann Todd, and Caroline T. Haskell. We are providing this brief biography for, The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Copyright 19982023, Jewish Women's Archive. He is a graduate of Denmark High School, Class of 1980. . He was definitely checking me out. Like, how did he meet his wife, activist Dottie Zellner (also white and worked for SNCC)? In 1966 SNCC voted to expel white activists from its organization, and although Zellner and his wife, Dorothy Miller Zellner, who also worked for SNCC, appealed, SNCCs central committee rejected their request for reinstatement. More:A man escaped slavery by mailing himself to freedom. Copyright 2023 The Forward Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Their south-wide strike achieved a rise in the price they were paid for their wood. Later that week, Zellner views a news report that John Lewis and the Freedom Riders are coming to Alabama and rushes back to the Durrs house to warn them not to come protest, and the story takes flight. He was untouched by the civilized world.. A Federal jury, in 2007, agreeing with civil rights attorney Frederick Brewington, ruled that Zellner and the Shinnecock were victims of false arrest, malicious prosecution, and denial of civil rights. The fight has not ended for Zellner and his wife, Pamela, who still invest in their community. As co-editor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committees newsletter, the Student Voice, Dorothy Miller Zellner helped craft the organizations message and report on stories suppressed by the mainstream media. UPTO 50% OFF ON ALL PRODUCTS. I had met church people strong in faith, but until then I had never seen such a dedicated soldiers, he remembered. My father was disowned by his father and his mother and his brothers never spoke to him again in his whole life. He took a very courageous stand in 2008 and now have things that have gone so far backwards that he's not able to invite this film crew back to Huntingdon to shoot on the campus. Bob Zellner. At the screening, Brown explained his goal was to make as authentic an Alabama film as possible; a feat harrowingly achieved in the bus station scene shot at the actual site of the attack. Bob Zellner was 22 years old when he got his first taste of the civil rights movement after marching to city hall with 100 Black Burglund High School students through McComb, Mississippi, in 1961. He was interested in my story and I started telling him stories about SNCC and working in Alabama and Mississippi. I liked him because he was the perfect good ole white boy, a teetotal white country boy, with the accent and the background of the real rural South. His organizing work paid off, with working class rallies with as many as two thousand black and white people out in a cow pastureold Mississippi rednecks with the whip antennas and [George] Wallace stickers on their trucks, standing next to black folks, all of them talking about how the power structure was holding them down.61 This enticed OL leaders, among others in the NCM, to recruit Zellner for organizing Deep South trade unionists and reforming Klansmen.[3]. I would have loved to see Zellners relationship in the later years of SNCC when the movement evolved and Bobby Seale pushed to shift SNCCs strategy and have the white members focusing on educating white folks instead of building a multi-racial movement. She had moved to Wisconsin to attend 'Marquette University.' He said, "I don't know." Zellner also Campaigned against David Duke in Louisiana when the former Klansman ran for governor claiming that he was no longer a racist. Joanne Jeannette Zellner, age 75, of Wisconsin Rapids, passed away Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at Edgewater Haven Nursing Home in Port Edwards. Dr. William Barber in the civil disobedience that kicked off the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina in 2013presents a message informed by direct experience that provides tools for organizing in todays fight for justice. Dorothy Miller Zellner In 1962, Zellner organized workshops on nonviolence for students at Talladega College in Alabama, preparing students for lunch counter sit-ins and marches. The Annual Faith and Politics Congressional Pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama and other sites of the freedom struggle was led by the Honorable John Lewis and filmed by Robin Smith, award winning documentary director and producer and president and founder of VideoAction. 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