"SNCC was our life. Bob Zellner. With Bob Zellner, Pattie Campo, Rob Stephens, Kevin A. Smith, Nancy Brown and Derick Smith in Petersburg, Virginia. It's really virulent here in the South, and it's easy to revert to that. We had the moral high ground, but it was also very practical. But Granddaddy lived until about 93. (2013). However, he still planned to move to Vietnam. I think Barry's gone way out of his way to involve young people, especially young, talented, famous people among young people. Raised in southern Alabama, he was the second of five boys born to Methodist minister James Abraham Zellner and school teacher Ruby Hardy Zellner. That's a positive thing, because as long as it's hidden, we're not dealing with it, but now it's so open, that we have no choice but to deal with it. There was a time in American cinema where the portrayal of Black bodies being brutalized by white racists was shocking. How could you not make a decision at that point? Julian Bond, now the National NAACP Chairman and Bob organized the National Civil Rights Coordinating Committee. Till is known for his work in CBS reboot of "MacGyver" and the movie "X-Men . During the protests in McComb, a person attempted to pull out his eyeballs. Well, it's very important to shoot it right here. 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. At heart, Son of the South is a coming-of-age story with the Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop. I was working with a cinematographer, Judy Irola and we were doing movies around the world and we'd started out doing civil rights movies about the South. (2012). Troopers attacked Dr. Zellner and members of the tribe who were protecting ancestral burial grounds from developer's bulldozers. He became who he is today, someone that has always been out on the very front line taking literally the physical and mental and emotional trauma of leading society out of a segregated mindset, MacQueen said. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. His race proved to be useful for SNCC as he forged connections with powerful whites in rural communities that were sympathetic to their organizing. He sounded country and he looked country. Zellners first job out of college was to be Counselor and staff at Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School located in Monteagle, Tennessee for the summer of 1961. I want to know everything about you, man, from the time you were born till right now. He did not quite trust Zellner, a white southerner. In 1967 when SNCC became all Black, Bob and Dottie Zellner designed and organized a white organizing push in the deep South called Grass Roots Organizing Work (GROW). Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace. The program is being organized by The Equity Project Alliance. He continues to speak publicly on civil rights and in 2008 published a memoir, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. In the early 1990s, studying at Tulane University for a Ph.D. in History, Zellner wrote a dissertation on the southern civil rights movement. Beginning in the mid-sixties Bob worked on documentary and feature films, traveling to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Bob was an organizer of the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the first white southerner to serve as Field Secretary for the . But did you feel like it was hard gaining SNCCs trust? He ran as a Democrat in District #1 (heavily GOP) for New York State Senate. School of Social Service Photo by Julia Cheng. Accueil Uncategorized did bob zellner marry joanne. Since 2014, he also tours twice a year with Project Pilgrimage as a Traveling Historian. Bob's memoir, "The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement", with Constance Curry and foreword by Julian Bond, was published by New South Books in the November, 2008. He was born in Oshkosh on May 2, 1960 the son of the late Raymond and Virginia Miley Zellner. His father, James Zellner, eventually left for Europe to support Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe during World War II, and when he returned, he left the KKK behind. His long list of academic accomplishments had every course but business. 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. Bob Zellner. Far more dramatic incidents detailed in Zellners book are left unexplored, such as his narrow brush with death in Danville, Virginia, even more dangerous that those he faced in the Deep South. Prominent Civil Rights Activist, Freedom Rider and Author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. Bob Zellner, civil rights activist and author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, sent this . NewSouth Books, 2020. Sometimes when we retell the stories, we actually soft pedal the amount of violence that there was. Two of those passengers, Catherine Burks-Brooks and Bernard Lafayette, along with later Freedom Rider Earnest Rip Patton, were aboard a replica bus arriving at the exact moment 10:23 a.m. that they had 60 years earlier. Zellner also Campaigned against David Duke in Louisiana when the former Klansman ran for governor claiming that he was no longer a racist. While in Russia, he lived and worked with a group of black gospel singers who were also helping the resistance, and when he returned to the United States, he repudiated his racist beliefs. It was painful. Top 3 Results for Bob Zellner. Youre going to love SNCC, she told him. An Evening with Bob Zellner: Civil Rights Activist is being held at Gateway Church of Christ on Feb. 25 and will feature a look at the movie based on his life, "Son of the South." The program is . It reminded me of Nazi Germany. Bob Zellner [00:00], Volume 24, Highlander, SSOC, and Organizing in the White Community: We Knew That We Were Not Free, SNCC 50th Anniversary Conference, 2010, California Newsreel, Click Here to View Document To register go to Eventbrite or the Equity Project Alliances Facebook page. Well, what was going through my mind at that time of meeting Rosa Parks and getting to know her and Reverend Abernathy. He's not going to reconcile with you, but you need to go see him." we loved all of that. It's Zellner who's "The Son of the South" a white preacher's kid from Alabama and the grandson of a Klansman. Learn more about our use of cookies: cookie policy. 3. 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. There's absolutely no doubt about it. Our site uses cookies. But it means a lot that he put me back in the will. I guess I was very lucky, because early on, our first staff meeting actually in SNCC, was in McComb, Mississippi. 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. On May 20, 1961, a busload of Freedom Riders arrived to a waiting mob at Montgomerys Greyhound Station, now the Freedom Rides Museum. Zellners Methodist preacher dad arrives for an impromptu family meeting in the middle of the street, right in between the college students and the KKK. 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 examples of Mrs. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer. How could you not become a part of the movement when Saint Rosa Parks told you to do so? Those were people that you had to take a tremendous risk to follow them. We brought people together across all kinds of barriers and lines, and now we can do it again to save our democracy. He came up with the idea that it's about the transition. That's was very hard to see. The rising sentiment in 1965 that whites should organize among whites challenged Zellner. The KKK arrives at the University to set those five white boys straight. Zellner was arrested, severely beaten and taken out of jail by a mob, who put a rope around his neck and told him he was going to be hanged. During that summer and the following year he was a trainee in nonviolence workshops led by James Lawson (activist)|James Lawson, John Lewis, and Diane Nash in Nashville, Tennessee. Here's the briefcase." But it didnt make the final cut. A 1957 graduation speaker at Murphy High School in Mobile, he received a BA from Huntingdon College, Montgomery, Alabama in 1961 with highest honors in Sociology and Psychology. Well, I was very lucky that I was mentored by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. It was a hellish scene. Bob Zellner, a trailblazing civil rights activist, is the grandson of an Alabama Klansman. In real life, the two were inseparable, enduring repeated beatings, arrests and jailings. He later moved to Wilson, North Carolina. He said, "I'm not coming back. Jeanine is a Writer, Actor, member SAG/AFTRA, AEA, Podcast host, Producer, CEO VisAbleBlackWoman Productions, Certified Health Coach and Conscious Dance facilitator. Carol Ann, the white girlfriend, is virtuous, saving herself for marriage, and Joanne, the light-skinned Black woman who not only speaks five languages, is a professor and lived in Paris, visits Zellners room in the middle of the night with a Mai Tai and jumps into bed with a man whose motto is, Ill try anything three times. It seems as if these characters were just thrown in to break up the narrative with a love story, which doesnt work. Bob Zellner. 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. As a new generation asks, What is my place in this struggle? Zellners work points to new answers. It's not the Pacific Ocean. Kathleen had met Robert for the first time in Missouri. He is the former director of the 'Chicago Mercantile Exchange.'. While a young activist at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, Zellner was initially introduced to the Southern Conference Educational Fund through its longtime leader Anne Braden. Robert grew up as a well-learned person and studied a lot of subjects, such as medicine and art. But when I was in the scene, when I was doing the cameo in the hanger scene, I was kind of into the scene, so it was not so bad. This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Civil Rights activist Bob Zellner to share his fight with Pensacola, Pensacola business leaders band together to fight systemic injustice, Elizabeth Eckford in Pensacola to share how she braved hate as one of the Little Rock Nine. Where: Gateway Church of Christ, 445 Creighton Road, Pensacola. His story is coming to Pensacola. They work alongside Common Power, an organization that encourages civic action through community, education and investment in a next-generation of leaders. Zellner himself became a candidate in 1998 while teaching Civil Rights History at LIU in eastern Long Island. Contact him at [emailprotected] or follow him on Twitter @robinbirk. 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. A paper on race relations. A lot of people see it as a moderate or a even cowardly stance, but it took a tremendous amount of courage to be non-violent in those situations. Zellner witnessed the beatings, leading him to become a full-time Civil Rights worker. Alex is survived by his wife . They had books and the mom was throwing the books in the fire. More:Pensacola business leaders band together to fight systemic injustice, More:Elizabeth Eckford in Pensacola to share how she braved hate as one of the Little Rock Nine. The son and grandson of Ku Klux Klan members, Zellner may have been the unlikeliest of allies to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. William Barbers Poor Peoples Campaign. Dorothy Miller Zellner Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism. 2. Back then, she wanted to pursue history and then become a professor. ", 2008 The University of Chicago Dr. William J. Barber II, the NAACP, voting rights groups, and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. (1961-1967). Kathleen had met Robert for the first time in Missouri. The beautiful thing about a biopic is that in less than two hours you can travel through a lifetime. So again, does a white Alabaman directing the story of another white Alabaman smack of saviorism? After that, Robert ventured into the field of share market and business, which was an objectionable profession in his family in the past. Zellner attended W.S. He put a big Wollensak recorder up on the desk and he said, "Look, brother, I want to know your life from the time you were born to right now, and it better hold out." In his book, Zellner writes that hes joining the movement not just because its the right thing to do, but also because its necessary for white people to do, after becoming convinced that the ills of segregation hold back not only Black people but white. While attending Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabamaan all-white Methodist schoolZellner was given a sociology assignment to research solutions to racial problems in the South. It's like, yeah-. It's hard to separate because they're your family. Dr. Bob Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 and raised in south Alabama, the second of five boys born to Methodist minister James Abraham Zellner and school teacher Ruby Hardy Zellner. 2. When he and his wife Dorothy "Dottie" Zellner presented the proposal for a "GROW" (Grassroots Organizing Work) project, it was turned down. How scary was that? While teaching in the Hamptons, Bob worked with the Shinnecock Nation on a campaign to stop the bulldozing of ancestral burial grounds for an upscale housing sub-division in Southampton, New York. In one of her interviews, Kathleen mentioned that she had binge-watched the 2015 'Netflix' series 'Making a Murderer' with Robert on their home theater and was intrigued. After teaching at Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, Bob was the first white southerner to serve as Field Secretary for SNCC ("Snick"), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. We knew that at some point we'd have to make a decision. Zellner Has Promised Big Revelations in the Case Kathleen Zellner, in a photo she posted on Facebook. Mayor Adam O'Neal is at the right. They have also lived in New Orleans, LA and New York, NY. A Comprehensive Document on Grass Roots Organizing Work (GROW), [1966], crmvet.org crmvet.org, Highlander, SSOC, and Organizing in the White Community: We Knew That We Were Not Free. 969 E. 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637 Apply several spritzes of water or sea salt spray so your strands are wet. Born in Alabama on 5 April 1939, John Robert Zellner was the second of James Abraham Zellner and Ruby Hardy Zellners five sons. Hes smart, top of his class, and on his way to graduate school up north. GROW organized poor whites in the rural Deep South, many of whom were well accustomed to the Ku Klux Klan in their communities. Zellner worked as a nurse for several years before joining the Center for Constitutional Rights in 1984. At 'Fed Atlanta,' Robert got acquainted with a research fellow from 'Duke University' who was pursuing the same doctoral program. That made him a special target for the mob that greeted young Black protesters. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Zellners a senior at a Methodist college. I want to know everything about you, man, from the time you were born till right now. He did not quite trust Zellner, a white southerner. I met Barry through Judy Irola and she said that he was from Montgomery, graduated Sydney Lanier. Select this result to view Linda R Zellner's phone number, address, and more. In the early 1960s, when Bob Zellner's professors and classmates at a small church school in Alabama thought he was crazy for even wanting to do research on civil rights, it was nothing short of . John Robert "Bob" Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 in Jay, Florida. 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