Nigger-loving motherf***ing Jew communist queer Goddamn Yankee from New York City, were the words used to describe Bob Zellner as a mob of white people descended upon him with chains, bricks, lead pipes, and baseball bats on October 4, 1961, in McComb, Mississippi. The story of these lynchings is told in the motion picture Mississippi Burning. ", 2008 The University of Chicago They resulted in a takeover basically, of our government. William Barbers Poor Peoples Campaign. 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. However, he still planned to move to Vietnam. It's very sad that Huntingdon College, where a huge part of the script takes place, that they weren't able to bring themselves to welcome us to shoot on the campus. As a new generation asks, What is my place in this struggle? Zellners work points to new answers. Jim Forman arrived a week later with a tape recorder. Those were people that you had to take a tremendous risk to follow them. Raised in southern Alabama, he was the second of five boys born to Methodist minister James Abraham Zellner and school teacher Ruby Hardy Zellner. My father was disowned by his father and his mother and his brothers never spoke to him again in his whole life. He said that my father didn't repudiate his Klan views, but he said, "You are my son. A man escaped slavery by mailing himself to freedom. And my father did, and he told me about it later on. Zellner recruited white southerners to join the Civil Rights Movement through his role as a campus traveler. In one, a white jailer puts them on display to curious tourists, one of whom asks them to say something in communist. Kish mir in tuchus, McDew responded famously. He later moved to Wilson, North Carolina. Robert took up the fellowship at the 'University of Florida.' One is Jewish and from the North, the other Southern and the son of a Methodist minister. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. The fight has not ended for Zellner and his wife, Pamela, who still invest in their community. It's just a very strong, terrible disease that people can't get over. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Zellner Has Promised Big Revelations in the Case Kathleen Zellner, in a photo she posted on Facebook. During the summer of 2013, Zellner was arrested with North Carolina Forward Together Movement for protesting voter suppression and continued to work closely with North Carolinas Moral Mondays Movement. If we had shown arms and openly been prepared to fight with arms, we would have been wiped out. When he and his wife Dorothy "Dottie" Zellner presented the proposal for a "GROW" (Grassroots Organizing Work) project, it was turned down. One was non-violence as a way of life, and the other Everybody in SNCC agreed in the earliest SNCC, that we would all be non-violent in terms of our public demonstrations and so forth. Bob and his wife Dottie joined SCEF, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, to . After his eighteenth arrest, Bob and his partner, Elizabeth Pamela Smith have moved back to his home state of Alabama, where they worked to elect Senator Doug Jones and support the work of EJI, Bryan Stevensons Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery. Kathleen had met Robert for the first time in Missouri. Zellner tells how one white Alabamian joined ranks with the Black students who were sitting-in, marching, fighting, and sometimes dying to challenge the Southern "way of life." . Born in Alabama in 1939, Bob Zellner has spent the better part of his nearly 82 years in and around the Alabama Gulf Coast. There were two wings in SNCC. 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 page was last edited on 31 March 2021, at 08:29. Zellner was charged with everything from criminal anarchy in Baton Rouge to "inciting the black population to acts of war and violence against the white population" in Danville, VA. From 1963 to 1965, Zellner studied race relations in the Graduate School of Sociology at Brandeis University. Back then, she wanted to pursue history and then become a professor. 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." I'm going back to school." Senator Jones served Alabama for two years. 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. As co-chair of the Town of Southampton Anti-Bias Task Force in 2000, Bob's right elbow was broken when he mediated a dispute between the police and the Shinnecock Nation. That was my introduction for SNCC. This group, the torch that lit their fuse, was a college paper I got assigned to do with four of my friends. In Zellners experience, the last thing that changes with white southerners is their rhetoric, so he judged white southerners by their deeds rather than words. Zellner attended W.S. Son of the South tells how Zellner chose to work for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. The program is being organized by The Equity Project Alliance. Follow Storyteller. A native Southerner born in a former Klan family, Bob Zellner dedicated his life to the fight for racial equality in the Civil Rights Movement nearly sixty years ago. We've been working on it for a long time. One Dream: The March on Washington. Zellner, Bob, and Constance Curry. They also help organize volunteers to visit swing states during the election to register voters. Son of the South is a biopic is based on The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, the autobiography of civil rights activist Bob Zellner (Lucas Till). First time I went back to Huntingdon College campus, I was arrested. He is a graduate of Denmark High School, Class of 1980. . 3. More than once, Zellner was beaten into unconsciousness. At 'Fed Atlanta,' Robert got acquainted with a research fellow from 'Duke University' who was pursuing the same doctoral program. Like, how did he meet his wife, activist Dottie Zellner (also white and worked for SNCC)? Until 1962 Zellner was SNCCs only white field secretary. His story is coming to Pensacola. As co-editor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's newsletter, the Student Voice, Dorothy Miller Zellner helped craft the organization's message and report on stories suppressed by the mainstream media.Zellner was arrested at a CORE demonstration in Miami in 1960 and participated in sit-ins in New Orleans before joining Julian Bond as co-editor of the Student Voice, which . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ms. Rosa Parks, Julian Bond, John Lewis, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), James Forman, Bayard Rustin, Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger. It was painful. 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. It tells the often turbulent story of . We've never dealt with basic racism and sexism of our country, and we really have to do that now. Activist Dorothy "Dottie" Miller (Zellner), who lost her shoes to high-pressure hoses after being clubbed during a demonstration in Danville, Virginia, gives an affidavit to James Forman, SNCC executive secretary. His continued active role in the movementnotably as one of 16 arrested with Rev. After working briefly in Atlanta, Zellner went to McComb, Mississippi, with Bob Moses and Chuck McDew for a SNCC planning session. He obviously started making notes, at least mental notes. It's the first time I think anybody has made a film about a young civil rights organizer, especially a white Southern organizer, deciding to go against all of our raising in the South and to take part in one of the most historical movements of right time. Robert completed his tenure in Atlanta and went back to the 'University of Florida,' where he completed his master's thesis on consumer credit. Son of the South will be available in select Theaters, On VOD & Digital February 5, 2021. The Zellners also work with Shirts Across America out of Seattle, Washington, where they teach children history, help them become civic leaders in their communities. Robert grew up as a well-learned person and studied a lot of subjects, such as medicine and art. He never felt any personal animosity from Stokely or any of the old hands, but [he] did feel it from some of the newer people. When he and his wife Dorothy Dottie Zellner presented the proposal for a GROW (Grassroots Organizing Work) project, it was turned down. This changed when one day, Robert came to know that he might have to move to Vietnam. 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. It got me into thinking about nonviolence. Shortly, Zeller wound up being hired by SNCC to conduct outreach to Southern whites. In 1998, she became director of publications and development for the Queens College School of Law. Please email us at [emailprotected], subject line republish, with any questions or to let us know what stories youre picking up. 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. Meeting them then and now was Zellner. As the grandson of a Klansmen, he's forced to open his eyes and come . (2016- present). Zellner decides he and his friends need to actually go and attend service at the Black church where Rev. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/robert-zellner-44847.php. More than once, Zellner was beaten into unconsciousness. It's Zellner who's "The Son of the South" a white preacher's kid from Alabama and the grandson of a Klansman. After witnessing a white activist brutally beaten by police, Zeller decided to join the movement "to get my own freedom," he says. If he is still at it today, he nearly lost it many times in the process. 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. Zellner and O'Neal and their supporters have twice walked the 283-mile trek from North Carolina to Washington D.C. to raise awareness. Bob Zellner was white. In August 2008, the Library Journal gave the book a Red Star Review: "He tells a story that is sometimes horrific, always interesting and ultimately inspirational about a white Southerner's commitment to racial justice. Dr. William J. Barber II, the NAACP, voting rights groups, and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The writer-director Barry Alexander Brown constantly reiterates how hard it is for white people to act against the mob and recognize the humanity of Black people. Hollywood loves to see Black women and men brutalized on screen and Son of the South isnt afraid to go there. Bob and his wife Dottie joined SCEF, the Southern Conference Educational Fund to organize an anti-racism project for black and white workers in the Deep South . 2. You go there, there's literally nothing there. At heart, Son of the South is a coming-of-age story with the Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather. Dorothy "Dottie" Miller Zellner is an American human rights activist, feminist, editor, lecturer, and writer. After graduating from Mobiles Murphy High School in 1957, Bob Zellner attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, where he took a course in race relations and attended a workshop held by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). (1961-1967). 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