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Gloria Richardson leader of the Cambridge, Maryland Nonviolent Action Committee..
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"A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom. A first-class citizen does not plead to the power structure to give him something that the whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights."
Meet "Glorious" Gloria Hayes Richardson (later Dandridge), the first woman to found and lead a grassroots civil rights organization outside of the Deep South, the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC). Born in 1922 Baltimore, Maryland during the Depression, Gloria was fortunate to be born into a reasonably privileged Black family --her father's family, the Hayes, owned real estate and operated businesses; and her mother's family, the St. Clairs, were politically active and well-connected --her maternal grandfather was the sole Black member of the Cambridge, Maryland city council. Gloria graduated from Howard University in 1942 and worked for various Federal agencies during World War II, but was unemployable in social services after the war due to her race. In 1948 she married schoolteacher Harry Richardson and spent the next 13 years raising their children, where the story might be expected to end.
It was her own teenage daughter Donna that changed Gloria's life trajectory. In 1961 Donna became involved with the Freedom Riders and then the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), in an attempt to desegregate Cambridge's public accommodations. Gloria also joined in the efforts but pointedly did not subscribe to, nor endorse, the SNCC's prevailing commitment to non-violence. When desegregation actions faltered, Gloria instead created the aforementioned Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC) as an adult-run SNCC affiliate. With the advantage of being in a so-called "border" state rather than in the Deep South, the CNAC was able to expand its scope of grievances, such as housing discrimination and health care. It also pursued its protest actions more aggressively (and with more violent consequences) than was the hallmark of the SNCC. In the summer of 1963 protest actions were sufficient to prompt Maryland Governor Millard Tawes to enact martial law. In an iconic photo (the basis for my illustration), Richardson visibly and angrily pushes back against a National Guard bayonet rifle. In July of that year Richardson actually landed a face-to-face meeting with then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and made it plain to him that the civil rights movement was not just about desegregation and voter registration drives, but also about systemic poverty and joblessness (Black unemployment ran to nearly 40% that year). In the aftermath of that meeting, the Treaty Of Cambridge was negotiated, which proposed to desegregate Dorchester County public facilities, establish provisions for public housing, and create a human rights commission.
Unfortunately Richardson's unapologetic means and methods, while certainly inspiring and headline-grabbing (and also placing her at No. 2 on the Ku Klux Klan's target list, just after Martin Luther King), also bore a cost: barely a month later, while she and five other women from the CNAC had been specifically invited to sit on the stage with King at the March On Washington, she was not allowed by its organizers to actually speak and only managed a quick "hello" to the assembled crowd that day, before her microphone was cut.
After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, after two years of near-continuous demonstrations, an exhausted Gloria resigned from the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee and moved to New York. In later years she divorced Harry Richardson and married Frank Dandridge, a freelance photographer. For the rest of her life Gloria remained steadfastly committed to pushing back against entrenched white supremacy, and never compromised in her advocacy. Notably she did not support Barack Obama's presidential campaign, viewing him as lacking the same depth and background of the civil rights advocates of the 60's. However she did live to the age of 99 --long enough to be able to watch from her New York apartment window the hopeful spectacle of a new generation of angry protestors taking their outrage to the streets, after the murder of George Floyd. Gloria died shortly afterwards, on July 15, 2021. The city of Cambridge, Maryland now features her likeness on a 50' x 20' mural, just adjacent to a depiction of a fellow Dorchester County native, Harriet Tubman.
"This Supreme Court is backward and extremely right-wing. They did a job on affirmative action and will certainly go after Roe v. Wade."
--from a disturbingly prophetic interview in 2008
#black lives matter#cnac#sncc#treaty of cambridge#march on washington#gloria richardson#teachtruth#dothework
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Gloria Richardson Born: May 6, 1922 -July 15, 2021, a Black civil rights pioneer who led the Cambridge Movement,
The activist died in her sleep at her New York City home on Thursday, her granddaughter Tya Young told the Associated Press.
A cause of death was not given, though Young noted to the outlet that Richardson had not been ill.
A graduate of Howard University, Richardson is known for her unrelenting determination in the fight for racial equality, having once been captured in a photograph pushing away the rifle of a National Guardsman during the civil rights movement in Cambridge, Maryland, in the '60s.
In 1962, after joining the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, she organized sit-ins to desegregate schools and public facilities and push for fair jobs, public housing, and equal education.
By 1963, the peaceful sit-ins turned violent and resulted in Cambridge Governor J. Millard Tawes declaring martial law. At the time, Cambridge Mayor Calvin Mowbray asked Richardson to end demonstrations in exchange for a promise not to arrest Black protestors, but she declined to compromise.~via ABC/news artwork/photo/meme authorship unknown
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Today We Honor Gloria Richardson “The lady general of civil rights.” - Ebony Magazine Gloria Richardson, leader of the Cambridge, Maryland Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), was as tough as they come. Born in Baltimore, Maryland to a middle-class family with a history of local activism, Gloria’s family were the owners of grocery stores in Cambridge’s Second Ward, a predominantly Black community separated from the white neighborhood by. The men in her family worked to alleviate the oppression of poor black people. CARTER™️ Magazine carter-mag.com #wherehistoryandhiphopmeet #historyandhiphop365 #cartermagazine #carter #blackhistorymonth #blackhistory #history #staywoke #gloriarichardson https://www.instagram.com/p/CmLph3luDGk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
#wherehistoryandhiphopmeet#historyandhiphop365#cartermagazine#carter#blackhistorymonth#blackhistory#history#staywoke#gloriarichardson
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'A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom. A first-class citizen does not plead to the white power structure to give him something that the whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights."
Happy Birthday, Gloria Richardson (1922-2021)
Richardson led the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (a SNCC affiliate) in Cambridge, Maryland to fight against institutional racism.
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This is Gloria Hayes Richardson leader of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC). The organization became the only adult-led SNCC affiliate in the Civil Rights Movement history. This photo was from a confrontation with the Maryland National Guard in 1963.
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Iconic photo of civil rights activist Ms. Gloria Richardson born on this day in 1922. “A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom. A first-class citizen does not plead to the white power-structure to give him something that the whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights.” Richardson led the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (a SNCC affiliate) in Cambridge, Maryland to fight against institutional racism. Here she is holding back the National Guard in Cambridge, MD. in 1963. Photo by Fred Ward.
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On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directs the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record new interviews with people who participated in the struggle, over a five year period beginning in 2010.
The activists interviewed for this project belong to a wide range of occupations, including lawyers, judges, doctors, farmers, journalists, professors, and musicians, among others. The video recordings of their recollections cover a wide variety of topics within the civil rights movement, such as the influence of the labor movement, nonviolence and self-defense, religious faith, music, and the experiences of young activists. Actions and events discussed in the interviews include the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), the Albany Movement (1961), the Freedom Rides (1961), the Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965), the Orangeburg Massacre (1968), sit-ins, voter registration drives in the South, and the murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955, a horrific event that galvanized many young people into joining the freedom movement.
Many interviewees were active in national organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Other interviewees were key members of specialized and local groups including the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Cambridge (Maryland) Nonviolent Action Committee, and the Newark Community Union Project. Several interviews include men and women who were on the front lines of the struggle in places not well-known for their civil rights movement activity such as Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Saint Augustine, Florida; and Bogalusa, Louisiana. Several of the interviews were conducted with the children of local civil rights leaders including Clara Luper, Robert Hicks, and Gayle Jenkins.
This site also guides researchers to collections in several Library divisions that specifically focus on the Civil Rights movement as well as the broader topic of African American history and culture. The Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039) contains 401 items consisting of video files, videocassettes, digital photographs and interview transcripts, with several more such items to be added once the interviews conclude in 2015.
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Gloria Richardson
Gloria Richardson is from Baltimore, Maryland, and was the leader of the Cambridge, Maryland Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC). Richardson was not the first activist in her family, both of her parents were involved in local activism in Baltimore. She attended Howard University, where she began her activism career and then after graduation moved back to Cambridge.
Richardson was aware of the racism that seemed to be everywhere that she went. She knew of the racism in schools and restaurants, but also in healthcare. Her father and uncle died because of the lack of healthcare for people of color. This is why she decided to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) when they came to the Eastern Shore. As an educated black women, it was still hard for her to find jobs, and she knew it had to be just as bad for other women of color.
Gloria Richardson is known for this infamous photo
photo: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/richardson-gloria-1922/
This photo takes place in 1963 during the Cambridge riot. The riots were a result of the racial tension between African American and white residents in Cambridge, Maryland. They felt that they were not solving anything with no violence, so they began using a military approach, which just ended up with more violations of their civil rights. The riots lasted three days, and they did not end until the end of that summer when a lot of the protestors went back to school.
When asked about the photo above, Richardson said that she was in a "little shoeshine place" and heard the bang. She thought they were bullets, so they went "crashing out" and when she got to the front to see what was happening, a guard charged at her. She was "furious, so she pushed his rifle away and cursed at him"^1. She thought she was crazy for doing that, and then a few days later she was called into the Justice Department for a meeting, where they stated that they wanted everyone protesting to just be quiet and that they would solve all of their problems. Of course, they were not going to do that, and if I was in the same situation, I would not have either. The Justice Department had not done anything yet, so what were they going to do then? I personally think that they just wanted all the protests and negative eyes on them to stop. In order for that to happen, the violence and segregation would have to end.
In March 1963, Richardson became the leader of CNAC and demonstrations continued. The first focus was on a local movie theater that forced African Americans to sit in the back rows of the balcony. These did not use violence and seemed to be more beneficial because not long after CNAC met with city officials to discuss this and other examples of violations to other black residents. This meeting though, did not help anything, so Richardson led another protest where her along with others were arrested for "disorderly conduct".
Throughout this summer, the violence continued to the point where Governor Tawes sent in the National Guard for two years. This was the longest period of any American community since the Civil War. It became country-wide knowledge, that a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland was fighting against segregation.
In June of 1964, Richardson had met with James A. Sensenbaugh, a school’s head, and an attorney named Fred E. Welsgal. She had called the meeting because she wanted to “complain about certain inequities in the educational system in Dorchester County”^2. While she did not specify what the inequities were, Dr. Sensenbaugh said that he felt like he received a sort of “status report on the integration in Dorchester County”^3 and decided that he did not have any plans in the future to meet with Richardson again.
Richardson then met with Clarence W. Miles, the chairman of the Governor’s Committee in Cambridge where she was more specific on the issues at hand. The major complaints were “local housing conditions, a need for changes in school board rules, a need for recreation areas in Cambridge, and a need for government contracts for Cambridge firms”^4. There were going to be follow-up meetings after that.
A quote that really sticks with me is "Cambridge isn't just any place, it's people making progress"^2. This was a sign that welcomed people into Cambridge. I always knew that Cambridge had awful issues with racism, and still happens to this day. It was very interesting for me to learn about a woman so close to home that fought to end the segregation for not only herself, but for all people of color.
Gloria Richardson might be one of my favorite people I have learned about. She refused to stand down and would not give up until segregation ended. I found it really interesting to learn more about the racism that took place in Cambridge, and that there were people that actually wanted it to end.
Sources:
1,5. Kisseloff, Jeff. "Gloria Richardson Dandridge: The Militant." In Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s, An Oral History, 51-63. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Accessed December 15, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt2jcj88.6.
2-4. Bibliography "RACIAL TALK IS HELD HERE: MRS. GLORIA RICHARDSON AND SCHOOLS HEAD CONFER." 1964.The Sun (1837-1995), Jun 13, 11. http://proxy-su.researchport.umd.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy-su.researchport.umd.edu/historical-newspapers/racial-talk-is-held-here/docview/539998826/se-2?accountid=28711.
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When the civil rights movement came to Cambridge Maryland in 1961 in the form of Freedom Riders, the town was thoroughly segregated and the African American unemployment rate was 40%. Gloria Richardson ( above) teenage daughter, Donna, became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) effort to desegregate public accommodations. Gloria, however, refused to commit herself to non-violence as a protest tactic. ⠀ When the SNCC-led protests faltered in 1962, Gloria and other parents created the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC) which became the only adult-led SNCC affiliate in the civil rights organization’s history. CNAC enlarged the scope of grievances to include housing and employment discrimination and inadequate health care. Richardson was selected to lead CNAC. This Richardson-led effort differed from most other civil rights campaigns of the era. It took place in a border state rather than the Deep South. It addressed a much wider array of issues rather than the one or two that motivated other campaigns. Since Richardson and her followers refused to commit to non-violence as a philosophy or a tactic, CNAC protests were far more violent and confrontative. Protests in 1963, for example, prompted Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes to send in the Maryland National Guard. The Guard remained in the city, which was effectively under martial law, for nearly a year. The Cambridge Movement also drew the attention of U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy who unsuccessfully attempted to broker an agreement between Cambridge’s white political leaders and Richardson’s CNAC. By the summer of 1964 Richardson resigned from the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee citing her exhaustion from leading nearly two years of continuous demonstrations. Although she maintained ties with Cambridge and with the local movement, Gloria Richardson never lived in Cambridge again. VIA BLACKPAST.COM #theunsungheroines
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That look though...#captionthis . A #mood - #awholemood . Gloria Richardson, head of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, pushes a National Guardsman’s bayonet aside at a demonstration in Cambridge, Maryland, on July 21, 1963. (AP) . Gloria Richardson stopped bayonets with the flip of her hand and a famous sidelong glance, which was immortalized by photographer Fred Ward in 1963. But her activism ran much deeper than the iconic moment in that photograph. Richardson led civil rights battles in her hometown of Cambridge, Maryland for years, pushing for desegregation but also for economic equality. She was in favor of tactics like armed self-defense and was therefore out of favor with the #NAACP at the time. Though she wasn’t in Cambridge in 1967 when riots broke out, she had been the one to invite Black Power activist H. Rap Brown to give the speech that sparked the riot. . #blackonblackbk #blacklivesmatter #blackpower #blackpride #blackprivilege #wefight #weresist #wewillwin #outfittingtherevolution #deconstructtheconstruct #itslifeordeathforus #civilrights #equality #equalityforall no #racism #whitepower #whiteprivilege #alliesandchampions #notagame #resistance (at Bedford-Stuyvesant) https://www.instagram.com/p/CHs_M0HlSW3/?igshid=10z7qf66it5fz
#captionthis#mood#awholemood#naacp#blackonblackbk#blacklivesmatter#blackpower#blackpride#blackprivilege#wefight#weresist#wewillwin#outfittingtherevolution#deconstructtheconstruct#itslifeordeathforus#civilrights#equality#equalityforall#racism#whitepower#whiteprivilege#alliesandchampions#notagame#resistance
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#didyouknow GLORIA RICHARDSON Raised in Baltimore, Maryland Gloria Richardson, leader of the Cambridge, Maryland Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), was as tough as they come. “We can’t deal with her; we can’t deal without her,” bemoaned a white Citizens’ Council spokesman during the height of protests in the Eastern Shore city. Ebony magazine dubbed her “The lady general of civil rights.” But Gloria Richardson did not emerge out of nowhere. A divorced mother of two, she was born in Baltimore, Maryland to a middle-class family with a history of local activism. They were the owners of grocery stores in Cambridge’s Second Ward, a predominantly Black community separated from the white neighborhood by Race Street. The men in her family were known as “race men,” who “worked to alleviate the oppression of poor black people.” Gloria knew early on that racism went beyond separate schools and restaurants. Racism, and the denial of appropriate health care because of it, caused the early deaths of her father and uncle. Her own activism began in 1938 at Howard University in Washington, DC. She protested at the local Woolworth’s and even conditions at Howard, before returning to Cambridge shortly after graduation. Even as one of the relatively few college-educated Black women in Cambridge, job prospects for Richardson were low. Though she was able to work at the pharmacy her family then owned, she saw how difficult it was for working-class Black residents of the Second Ward to survive. When SNCC came to the Eastern Shore on Christmas Eve 1961, Richardson’s uncle Herbert St. Clair and cousin Freddie helped post bond for the protestors. Richardson first got involved with the Movement when groups of high-schoolers, including her daughter Donna, began holding demonstrations and boycotts to disrupt the local economy. Richardson attended SNCC’s 1962 Atlanta conference and returned to Cambridge with a new outlook on organizing. She became a member of SNCC’s executive board. With the help of students from Swarthmore College, they surveyed the Second Ward to ensure that the organization prioritized the needs of the community. #blackhistorymonth https://www.instagram.com/p/B8y_UtJADmq/?igshid=1d9n99x6qu90y
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Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American that became a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement and the global Pan-African movement. He grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while he attended Howard University. He was active in the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and finally as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).
Early life and education
Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Stokely Carmichael attended Tranquility School there before moving to Harlem, New York, in 1952 at the age of 11, to rejoin his parents who had emigrated to the United States when he was age two, leaving him with his grandmother and two aunts. He had three sisters.
His mother Mabel R. Carmichael was a stewardess for a steamship line. His father Adolphus was a carpenter who also worked as a taxi driver. The reunited Carmichael family eventually left Harlem to live in Van Nest in the East Bronx, at that time an aging neighborhood with residents who were primarily Jewish and Italian immigrants and descendants. According to a 1967 interview he gave to Life Magazine, Carmichael was the only black member of the Morris Park Dukes, a youth gang involved in alcohol and petty theft.
He attended the elite, selective Bronx High School of Science in New York, with entrance based on academic performance.
After graduation in 1960, Carmichael enrolled at Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C.. His professors included Sterling Brown, Nathan Hare, and Toni Morrison, a writer who later won the Nobel Prize. Carmichael and Tom Kahn, a Jewish-American student and civil-rights activist, helped to fund a five-day run of the Three Penny Opera, by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill:
Tom Kahn—very shrewdly—had captured the position of Treasurer of the Liberal Arts Student Council and the infinitely charismatic and popular Carmichael as floor whip was good at lining up the votes. Before they knew what hit them the Student Council had become a patron of the arts, having voted to buy out the remaining performances. It was a classic win/win. Members of the Council got patronage packets of tickets for distribution to friends and constituents.
Carmichael's apartment on Euclid Street was a gathering place for his activist classmates. He graduated in 1964 with a degree in philosophy. Carmichael was offered a full graduate scholarship to Harvard University, but turned it down.
While at Howard, Carmichael had joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard campus affiliate of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Kahn introduced Carmichael and the other SNCC activists to Bayard Rustin, an African-American leader who became an influential adviser to SNCC. Inspired by the sit-in movement in the southern United States during college, Carmichael became more active in the Civil Rights Movement.
1961: Freedom Rides
In his first year at the university, in 1961, he participated in the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to desegregate the bus station restaurants along U.S. Route 40 between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. and was frequently arrested, spending time in jail. He was arrested so many times for his activism that he lost count, sometimes estimating at least 29 or 32. In 1998, he told the Washington Post that he thought the total was fewer than 36.
Along with eight other riders, on June 4, 1961, Carmichael traveled by train from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Jackson, Mississippi, to integrate the formerly "white" section on the train. Before getting on the train in New Orleans, they encountered white protestors blocking the way. Carmichael says: "They were shouting. Throwing cans and lit cigarettes at us. Spitting on us." Eventually, they were able to board the train. When the group arrived in Jackson, Carmichael and the eight other riders entered a "white" cafeteria. They were charged with disturbing the peace, arrested and taken to jail.
Eventually, Carmichael was transferred to the infamous Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi, along with other Freedom Riders. He gained notoriety for being a witty and hard-nosed leader among the prisoners.
He served 49 days with other activists at the Parchman State Prison Farm. At 19 years of age, Carmichael was the youngest detainee in the summer of 1961. He spent 53 days at Parchman Farm in "a six-by-nine cell. Twice a week to shower. No books, nothing to do. They would isolate us. Maximum security." Carmichael said about the Parchman Farm sheriff:
The sheriff acted like he was scared of black folks and he came up with some beautiful things. One night he opened up all the windows, put on ten big fans and an air conditioner and dropped the temperature to 38 degrees [Fahrenheit; 3 °C]. All we had on was T-shirts and shorts.
While being hurt one time, Carmichael began singing to the guards, "I'm gonna tell God how you treat me," to which the rest of the prisoners joined in.
Carmichael kept the group's morale up while in prison, often telling jokes with Steve Green and the other Freedom Riders, and making light of their situation. He knew their situation was serious.
What with the range of ideology, religious belief, political commitment and background, age, and experience, something interesting was always going on. Because no matter our differences, this group had one thing in common, moral stubbornness. Whatever we believed, we really believed and were not at all shy about advancing. We were where we were only because of our willingness to affirm our beliefs even at the risk of physical injury. So it was never dull on death row.
In a 1964 interview with author Robert Penn Warren, Carmichael reflected on his motives for going on the rides, saying,
I thought I have to go because you've got to keep the issue alive, and you've got to show the Southerners that you're not gonna be scared off, as we've been scared off in the past. And no matter what they do, we're still gonna keep coming back.
1964–67: SNCC
Mississippi and Cambridge, Maryland
In 1964, Carmichael became a full-time field organizer for SNCC in Mississippi. He worked on the Greenwood voting rights project under Robert Parris Moses. Throughout Freedom Summer, he worked with grassroots African-American activists, including Fannie Lou Hamer, whom Carmichael named as one of his personal heroes. SNCC organizer Joann Gavin wrote that Hamer and Carmichael "understood one another as perhaps no one else could."
He also worked closely with Gloria Richardson, who led the SNCC chapter in Cambridge, Maryland. During a protest with Richardson in Maryland in June 1964, Carmichael was hit directly in a chemical gas attack by the National Guard and had to be hospitalized.
He soon became project director for Mississippi's 2nd congressional district, made up largely in the counties of the Mississippi Delta. At that time, most blacks in Mississippi were still disenfranchised. The summer project was to prepare them to register to vote and to conduct a parallel registration movement to demonstrate how much people wanted to vote. Grassroots activists organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), as the regular Democratic Party did not represent African Americans in the state. At the end of Freedom Summer, Carmichael went to the 1964 Democratic Convention in support of the MFDP, which sought to have its delegation seated. But, the MFDP delegates were refused voting rights by the Democratic National Committee, who chose to seat the regular white Jim Crow delegation. Carmichael, along with many SNCC staff members, left the convention with a profound sense of disillusionment in the American political system, and what he later called "totalitarian liberal opinion."
Selma to Montgomery Marches
Having developed aversion to working with the Democratic Party after the 1964 convention experience, Carmichael decided to leave the MFDP. Instead he began exploring SNCC projects in Alabama in 1965. During the period of the Selma to Montgomery Marches, he was recruited by James Forman to participate in a "second front" to stage protests at the Alabama State Capitol in March 1965. Carmichael became disillusioned with the growing struggles between SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), who opposed Forman's strategy. He thought SCLC was working with affiliated black churches to undercut it. He was also frustrated to be drawn again into nonviolent confrontations with police, which he no longer found empowering. After seeing protesters brutally beaten again, he collapsed from stress, and his colleagues urged him to leave the city.
Within a week, Carmichael returned to protesting, this time in Selma, to participate in the final march along Route 80. He initiated a grassroots project in "Bloody Lowndes" County, along the march route. This was a county known for white violence, where SCLC and Dr. King had tried and failed to organize its black residents.
Lowndes County Freedom Organization
In 1965, working as a SNCC activist in the black-majority Lowndes County, Carmichael helped to increase the number of registered black voters from 70 to 2,600—300 more than the number of registered white voters. Black voters had essentially been disfranchised by Alabama's constitution passed by white Democrats in 1901. After Congressional passage in August of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the federal government was authorized to oversee and enforce their rights. But there was still tremendous resistance by whites in the area, endangering activists. Black residents and voters organized and widely supported the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LFCO), a party that had the black panther as its mascot, over the white-dominated local Democratic Party, whose mascot was a white rooster. Since federal protection from violent voter suppression by the Ku Klux Klan and other white opponents was sporadic, most Lowndes County activists openly carried arms.
Although black residents and voters outnumbered whites in Lowndes, their candidate lost the county-wide election of 1965. In 1966, several LFCO candidates ran for office in the general election but failed to win. In 1970, the LCFO merged with the statewide Democratic Party, and former LCFO candidates won their first offices in the county.
Chair of SNCC and Black Power
Carmichael became chairman of SNCC in 1966, taking over from John Lewis, who later was elected to the US Congress. A few weeks after Carmichael took office, James Meredith was shot and wounded by a sniper during the solitary March Against Fear. Carmichael joined Martin Luther King Jr., Floyd McKissick, Cleveland Sellers and others to continue Meredith's march. He was arrested during the march and, upon his release, he gave his first "Black Power" speech, using the phrase to urge black pride and socio-economic independence:
According to historian David J. Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a few days after Carmichael used the "Black Power" slogan at the "Meredith March Against Fear," he reportedly told King: "Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum and force you to take a stand for Black Power." King responded, "I have been used before. One more time won't hurt."
While Black Power was not a new concept, Carmichael's speech brought it into the spotlight. It became a rallying cry for young African Americans across the country who were frustrated about slow progress in civil rights. Everywhere that Black Power spread, if accepted, credit was given to the prominent Carmichael. If the concept was condemned, he was held responsible and blamed. According to Carmichael: "Black Power meant black people coming together to form a political force and either electing representatives or forcing their representatives to speak their needs [rather than relying on established parties]". Strongly influenced by the work of Frantz Fanon and his landmark book The Wretched of the Earth, along with others such as Malcolm X, Carmichael led SNCC to become more radical. The group focused on Black Power as its core goal and ideology.
During the controversial Atlanta Project in 1966, SNCC, under the local leadership of Bill Ware, engaged in a voter drive to promote the candidacy of Julian Bond for the Georgia State Legislature in an Atlanta district. Ware excluded Northern white SNCC members from this drive. Initially, Carmichael opposed him and voted against this decision, but eventually changed his mind. When, at the urging of the Atlanta Project, the issue of whites in SNCC came up for a vote, Carmichael ultimately sided with those calling for the expulsion of whites. He said that whites should organize poor white southern communities, of which there were plenty, while SNCC focused on promoting African-American self-reliance through Black Power.
Carmichael considered nonviolence to be a tactic as opposed to an underlying principle, which separated him from civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Carmichael criticized civil rights leaders who called for the integration of African Americans into existing institutions of the middle-class mainstream.
Under Carmichael's term, SNCC continued to maintain a coalition with several white radical organizations, most notably Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It encouraged the SDS to focus on militant anti-draft resistance. At an SDS-organized conference at UC Berkeley in October 1966, Carmichael challenged the white left to escalate their resistance to the military draft in a manner similar to the black movement. For a time in 1967, Carmichael considered an alliance with Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, and generally supported IAF's work in Rochester and Buffalo's black communities.
Vietnam
SNCC conducted its first actions against the military draft and the Vietnam War under Carmichael's leadership. Carmichael popularized the oft-repeated anti-draft slogan, "Hell no-We won't go!" during this time.
Carmichael encouraged Martin Luther King Jr. to demand an unconditional withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, even as some King advisers cautioned him that such opposition might have an adverse effect on financial contributions to the SCLC. King preached one of his earliest speeches calling for unconditional withdrawal with Carmichael seated in the front row at his invitation. Carmichael privately took credit for pushing King towards anti-imperialism, and historians such as Dr. Peniel Joseph and Eric Dyson agree.
Carmichael joined King in New York on April 15, 1967, to share his views with protesters on race related to the Vietnam War:
1967–68: Transition out of SNCC
Stepping down as chair
In May 1967, Carmichael stepped down as chairman of SNCC and was replaced by H. Rap Brown. SNCC was a collective and worked by group consensus rather than hierarchically; many members had become displeased with Carmichael's celebrity status. SNCC leaders had begun to refer to him as "Stokely Starmichael" and criticize his habit of making policy announcements independently, before achieving internal agreement. According to historian Clayborne Carson, Carmichael did not protest the transfer of power and was "eager to relinquish the chair." (It is sometimes mistakenly reported that Carmichael left SNCC completely at this time and joined the Black Panther Party, but those events did not occur until 1968.)
Targeted by FBI COINTELPRO
During this period, Carmichael was targeted by a section of J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) which focused on black activists; the program promoted slander and violence against targets that Hoover considered to be enemies of the US government. Carmichael accepted the position of Honorary Prime Minister in the Black Panther Party, but also remained on the staff of SNCC, and attempted to forge a merger between the two organizations. A March 4, 1968 memo from Hoover states his fear of the rise of a black nationalist "messiah" and notes that Carmichael alone had the "necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way." In July 1968, Hoover stepped up his efforts to divide the black power movement. Declassifed documents show a plan was launched to undermine the SNCC-Panther merger, as well as to "bad-jacket" Carmichael as a CIA agent. Both efforts were largely successful: Carmichael was expelled from SNCC that year, and rival Panthers began to denounce him.
International activism
After stepping down as SNCC chair, Carmichael wrote the book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967) with Charles V. Hamilton, while clarifying his thinking. He also continued as a strong critic of the Vietnam War, and imperialism in general. During this period he traveled and lectured extensively throughout the world; visiting Guinea, North Vietnam, China, and Cuba. Carmichael became more clearly identified with the Black Panther Party as its "Honorary Prime Minister." During this period, he acted more as a speaker than an organizer, traveling throughout the country and internationally advocating for his vision of Black Power.
Carmichael lamented the 1967 execution of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, saying:
The death of Che Guevara places a responsibility on all revolutionaries of the World to redouble their decision to fight on to the final defeat of Imperialism. That is why in essence Che Guevara is not dead, his ideas are with us.
Carmichael visited the United Kingdom in July 1967 to attend the Dialectics of Liberation conference. After recordings of his speeches were released by the organizers, the Institute of Phenomenological Studies, he was banned from re-entering Britain.
1968 D.C. riots
Carmichael was present in Washington, D.C. the night after King's assassination in April 1968. He led a group through the streets, demanding that businesses close out of respect. Although he tried to prevent violence, the situation escalated beyond his control. Due to his reputation as a provocateur, the news media blamed Carmichael for the ensuing violence as mobs rioted along U Street and other areas of black commercial development.
Carmichael held a press conference the next day, at which he predicted mass racial violence in the streets. Since moving to Washington, D.C., Carmichael had been under nearly constant surveillance by the FBI. After the eruption of riots, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover instructed a team of agents to find evidence connecting Carmichael to these events. He was also subjected to COINTELPRO's bad-jacketing technique. Huey P. Newton suggested Carmichael was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, a slander that led to Carmichael's break with the Panthers, and his exile from the U.S. the following year.
1969–98: Travel to Africa
Carmichael soon began to distance himself from the Panthers. He disagreed with them about whether white activists should be allowed to participate in the movement. The Panthers believed that white activists could help the movement, while Carmichael had come to agree with Malcolm X, and said that the white activists should organize their own communities first.
In 1968, he married Miriam Makeba, a noted singer from South Africa. They left the US for Guinea the next year. Carmichael became an aide to the Guinean president Ahmed Sékou Touré, and a student of the exiled Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. Makeba was appointed Guinea's official delegate to the United Nations. Three months after his arrival in Guinea, in July 1969, Carmichael published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning them for not being separatist enough and for their "dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals".
Carmichael changed his name to "Kwame Ture", to honor the African leaders Nkrumah and Touré, who had become his patrons. At the end of his life, friends still referred to him interchangeably by both names, "and he doesn't seem to mind".
Carmichael's suspicions about the CIA were affirmed in 2007, when previously secret CIA documents were declassified, revealing that the agency had tracked Carmichael from 1968 as part of their surveillance of black activists abroad. The surveillance continued for years.
Carmichael remained in Guinea after separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak in support of international leftist movements. In 1971 he published his collected essays in a second book, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. This book expounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision, which he retained for the rest of his life. From the late 1970s until the day he died, he answered his phone by announcing, "Ready for the revolution!"
In 1986, two years after Sékou Touré's death in 1984, the military regime that took his place arrested Carmichael, for his past association with Touré, and jailed him for three days on suspicion of attempting to overthrow the government. Although Touré was known for jailing and torturing his opponents, Carmichael had never publicly criticized his namesake.
All-African People's Revolutionary Party
For the final 30 years of his life, Kwame Ture was devoted to the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). His mentor Kwame Nkrumah had many ideas for unifying the African continent, and Ture used those ideas in a broader scope involving the entire African diaspora. He was a central committee member for the entire time that he participated in the A-APRP, and made many speeches in the Party's behalf.
Ture did not simply study with Sékou Touré and Kwame Nkrumah. The latter had been designated honorary co-president of Guinea after he was deposed by the US-backed coup in Ghana. Ture worked overtly and covertly to "Take Nkrumah Back to Ghana" (according to the movement's slogan). He became a member of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), the revolutionary ruling party of Guinea. He sought Nkrumah's permission to launch the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), which Nkrumah had called for in his book Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare. After several discussions, Nkrumah gave his blessing.
Ture was convinced that the A-APRP was needed as a permanent mass-based organization on all continents and in all countries in which people of African descent lived. For the remainder of his life, a period often ignored by popular media, Ture worked for decades on a full-time basis as an "organizer" of the Party. He spoke on its behalf on several continents at innumerable college campuses, in community centers and other venues. He was instrumental in strengthening ties between the African/Black liberation movement and several revolutionary or progressive organizations, both African and non-African. Notable among them were the American Indian Movement (AIM) of the United States, New Jewel Movement (Grenada), National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) of Trinidad and Tobago), Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Pan Africanist Congress (South Africa) and the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
Routinely, Ture was regarded as the leader of the A-APRP, but his only title was "Organizer", and he was a member of the Central Committee. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the A-APRP began each May to sponsor African Liberation Day (ALD), a continuation of African Freedom Day begun by Kwame Nkrumah in 1958 in Ghana. Although the party was involved in or was primary or co-sponsor of other ALD annual observances, marches and rallies around the world, the best-known and largest celebration of the event was held annually in Washington, DC, usually at Meridian Hill Park (also known as Malcolm X Park) at 16th and W Streets, NW.
While based in Guinea as home, Ture traveled a good part of the time. Britain and his birth country, Trinidad and Tobago, barred him from speaking at one time or another for fear that he would arouse African-descended people in those countries. In the last quarter of the 20th century, Ture became the world's most active and prominent exponent of pan-Africanism, defined by Nkrumah and the A-APRP as "The Liberation and Unification of Africa Under Scientific Socialism."
Ture often returned to speak to large (1,000+) audiences at his alma mater, Howard University, which generally included students and community residents and other campuses. The party worked to recruit students and other youth, and Ture hoped to attract them through his speeches. He also worked to raise the political consciousness of African/Black people. Shortly after the A-APRP was formed, he said that an initial goal was to bring "Africa" on the lips of Black people throughout the African Diaspora. He knew that many may not have consciously related to the continent in a positive way after generations away. Ture was convinced, according to those who worked closely with him, that the party played a significant role in helping to raise international black consciousness of pan-Africanism.
Under his leadership, the A-APRP organized the All African Women's Revolutionary Union and the Sammy Younge Jr. Brigade (named after the first black college student to die during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement) as component organizations.
Ture and Cuba's president Fidel Castro were mutual admirers, sharing a common opposition to imperialism. In Ture's final letter, he wrote:
It was Fidel Castro who before the OLAS (Organization of Latin American States) Conference said "if imperialism touches one grain of hair on his head, we shall not let the fact pass without retaliation." It was he, who on his own behalf, asked them all to stay in contact with me when I returned to the United States to offer me protection.
Ture was ill when he gave his final speech at Howard University. A standing room-only crowd in Rankin Chapel paid tribute to him and he spoke boldly, as usual. A small group of student leaders from Howard University and a former Party member traveled to Harlem (Sugar Hill) in New York City to bid farewell to Kwame Ture shortly before what was his final return to Guinea. Also present that evening were Kathleen Cleaver and another Black Panther, Dhoruba bin Wahad. Ture was in good spirits though in pain. The group bidding farewell to Kwame Ture included African/Black men and women born in Africa, South America, the Caribbean and the USA.
Illness and death
After his diagnosis of prostate cancer in 1996, Ture was treated for a period in Cuba, while receiving some support from the Nation of Islam. Benefit concerts for Ture were held in Denver; New York; Atlanta; and Washington, D.C., to help defray his medical expenses. The government of Trinidad and Tobago, where he was born, awarded him a grant of $1,000 a month for the same purpose. He went to New York, where he was treated for two years at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, before returning to Guinea.
In a final interview given in April 1998 to The Washington Post, Ture had criticized the limited economic and electoral progress made by African Americans in the U.S. during the previous 30 years. He acknowledged that blacks had won election to the mayor's office in major cities, but said that, as the mayors' power had generally diminished over earlier decades, such progress was essentially meaningless.
In 1998 Ture died of prostate cancer at the age of 57 in Conakry, Guinea. He had said that his cancer "was given to me by forces of American imperialism and others who conspired with them." He claimed that the FBI had infected him with cancer in an assassination attempt.
The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson spoke in celebration of Ture's life, stating: "He was one of our generation who was determined to give his life to transforming America and Africa. He was committed to ending racial apartheid in our country. He helped to bring those walls down". NAACP Chair Julian Bond said that Carmichael "ought to be remembered for having spent almost every moment of his adult life trying to advance the cause of black liberation."
Personal life
Carmichael had married Miriam Makeba, the noted singer from South Africa, while in the US in 1968. They divorced in Guinea after separating in 1973.
Later he married Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor. They divorced some time after having a son, Bokar, together in 1981. By 1998, Marlyatou Barry and Bokar were living in Arlington County, Virginia, near Washington, DC. Relying on a statement from the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, Carmichael's 1998 obituary in The New York Times referred to his survivors as two sons, three sisters, and his mother, without further details.
Legacy
Kwame Ture, along with Charles V. Hamilton, is credited with coining the phrase "institutional racism". This is defined as racism that occurs through institutions such as public bodies and corporations, including universities. In the late 1960s Ture defined "institutional racism" as "the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin".
In his book on Carmichael, David J. Garrow criticized Ture's handling of the Black Power movement as "more destructive than constructive." Garrow described the period in 1966 where Ture and other members of the SNCC managed to successfully register 2,600 African American voters in Lowndes County, Alabama, as the most consequential period in Ture's life "in terms of real, positive, tangible influence on people's lives." Evaluations from Ture's associates are also mixed, with most praising his efforts and others criticizing him for failing to find constructive ways to achieve his objectives. SNCC's final Chair, Phil Hutchings, who expelled Ture over a dispute concerning the Black Panther Party, wrote that, "Even though we kidded and called him 'Starmichael,' he could sublimate his ego to get done what was needed to be done....He would say what he thought, and you could disagree with it but you wouldn't cease being a human being and someone with whom he wanted to be in relationship." Washington Post staff writer Paula Span described Carmichael as someone who was rarely hesitant to push his own ideology. Tufts University historian Peniel Joseph credits Ture with expanding the parameters of the civil rights movement, asserting that his black power strategy "didn't disrupt the civil rights movement. It spoke truth to power to what so many millions of young people were feeling. It actually cast a light on people who were in prisons, people who were welfare rights activists, tenants' rights activists, and also in the international arena." Tavis Smiley calls Ture "one of the most underappreciated, misunderstood, undervalued personalities this country's ever produced."
In 2002, the American-born scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Kwame Ture as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.
Accusations
Anti-semitism
Jews had comprised a disproportionate number of the white supporters of the southern civil rights movement. The subsequent rejection of white activists from groups like SNCC and CORE, accompanied by ideological factors such as the shift in emphasis to a revolutionary anti-colonialist struggle, and anti-Zionist sympathy for the Palestinians, led to a permanent souring of relations in America between blacks and Jews. Although he stated in his posthumously published memoirs that he had never been anti-semitic, in 1970 Carmichael proclaimed: "I have never admired a white man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler."
Misogyny
In November 1964 Carmichael made a joking remark in response to a SNCC position paper written by his friends Casey Hayden and Mary E. King on the position of women in the movement. In the course of an irreverent comedy monologue he performed at a party after SNCC's Waveland conference, Carmichael said, "The position of women in the movement is prone." A number of women were offended. In a 2006 The Chronicle of Higher Education article, historian Peniel E. Joseph later wrote:
While the remark was made in jest during a 1964 conference, Carmichael and black-power activists did embrace an aggressive vision of manhood — one centered on black men's ability to deploy authority, punishment, and power. In that, they generally reflected their wider society's blinders about women and politics.
When asked about the comment, former SNCC field secretary Casey Hayden stated: "Our paper on the position of women came up, and Stokely in his hipster rap comedic way joked that 'the proper position of women in SNCC is prone'. I laughed, he laughed, we all laughed. Stokely was a friend of mine." A former SNCC worker identified only as "Tyler" on the Internet claimed: "I will forever remember Stokely Carmichael as the one who said 'the position of women in the movement is prone'. This viciously anti-women outlook is another reason why all of these nationalist movements went nowhere." In her memoir, Mary E. King wrote that Carmichael was "poking fun at his own attitudes" and that "Casey and I felt, and continue to feel, that Stokely was one of the most responsive men at the time that our anonymous paper appeared in 1964."
Carmichael appointed several women to posts as project directors during his tenure as chairman of SNCC; by the latter half of the 1960s (considered to be the "Black Power era"), more women were in charge of SNCC projects than during the first half.
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Today We Honor Gloria Richardson “The lady general of civil rights.” - Ebony Magazine Gloria Richardson, leader of the Cambridge, Maryland Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), was as tough as they come. Born in Baltimore, Maryland to a middle-class family with a history of local activism, Gloria’s family were the owners of grocery stores in Cambridge’s Second Ward, a predominantly Black community separated from the white neighborhood by Race Street. The men in her family were known as “race men,” who worked to alleviate the oppression of poor black people. CARTER™️ Magazine carter-mag.com #wherehistoryandhiphopmeet #historyandhiphop365 #cartermagazine #carter #blackhistorymonth #blackhistory #history #staywoke #gloriarichardson https://www.instagram.com/p/CXgJGq7rTwf/?utm_medium=tumblr
#wherehistoryandhiphopmeet#historyandhiphop365#cartermagazine#carter#blackhistorymonth#blackhistory#history#staywoke#gloriarichardson
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Gloria attended Howard University in Washington at the age of 16 and graduated in 1942 with a degree in sociology. After Howard, she worked as a civil servant for the federal government in World War II-era Washington, D.C. but returned to Cambridge after the war. Despite her grandfather’s political and economic influence, the Maryland Department of Social Services, for example, refused to hire Gloria or any other black social workers. Gloria Hayes married local school teacher Harry Richardson in 1948 and raised a family for the next thirteen years.
When the civil rights movement came to Cambridge in 1961 in the form of Freedom Riders, the town was thoroughly segregated and the African American unemployment rate was 40%. Gloria Richardson’s teenage daughter, Donna, became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) effort to desegregate public accommodations. Gloria, however, refused to commit herself to non-violence as a protest tactic.
When the SNCC-led protests faltered in 1962, Gloria and other parents created the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC) which became the only adult-led SNCC affiliate in the civil rights organization’s history. CNAC enlarged the scope of grievances to include housing and employment discrimination and inadequate health care. Richardson was selected to lead CNAC.
Richardson, Gloria (1922- ) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed
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John Pilger's epic portrayal of Earth's oldest continuous human culture, Aboriginal Australians, and his investigation into Australia's suppressed colonial past and rapacious present.
Following his hard-hitting documentary The War You Don't See, John Pilger's new film is a rare and powerful insight into a secret Australia and breaks what amounts to a national silence about the indigenous first people -- the oldest, most enduring presence on Earth.
An epic film in its production, scope and revelations, UTOPIA reveals that apartheid is deep within Australia's past and present and that Aboriginal people are still living in abject poverty and Third World conditions, with a low life expectancy and disproportionately high rate of deaths in police custody.
2 DVDs / 2013 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 112 minutes
YOU'VE BEEN TRUMPED
Directed by Anthony Baxter
In this David and Goliath story for the 21st century, a group of proud Scottish homeowners take on a celebrity tycoon. At stake is one of Britain's very last stretches of wilderness.
American billionaire Donald Trump has bought up hundreds of acres on the northeast coast of Scotland, best known to movie-lovers as the setting for the 1983 classic film LOCAL HERO. And like the American oil tycoon played by Burt Lancaster, he needs to buy out a few more locals to make the deal come true. In a land swimming with golf courses, Trump is going to build two more - alongside a 450-room hotel and 1,500 luxury homes. The trouble is, the land he has purchased occupies one of Europe's most environmentally sensitive stretches of coast, described by one leading scientist as Scotland's Amazon rain forest. And the handful of local residents don't want it destroyed.
After the Scottish Government overturns its own environmental laws to give Trump the green light, the stage is set for an extraordinary summer of discontent, as the bulldozers spring into action. Water and power is cut off, land disputes erupt, and some residents have thousands of tonnes of earth piled up next to their homes. Complaints go ignored by the police, who instead arrest the film's director, Anthony Baxter. Local exasperation comes to a surreal head as the now "Dr." Trump scoops up an honorary doctorate from a local university, even as his tractors turn wild, untouched dunes into fairways.
Told entirely without narration, YOU'VE BEEN TRUMPED captures the cultural chasm between the glamorous, jet-setting and media savvy Donald Trump and a deeply rooted Scottish community. What begins as an often amusing clash of world views grows increasingly bitter and disturbing. For the tycoon, the golf course is just another deal, with a possible billion dollar payoff. For the residents, it represents the destruction of a globally unique landscape that has been the backdrop for their lives.
Funny, inspiring and heartbreaking in turns, YOU'VE BEEN TRUMPED is both an entertaining, can't-believe-it's-true tale and an environmental parable for our celebrity driven times. A moving score features music from jónsi, the internationally acclaimed musician and frontman of Sigur Rós. The film also offers a rare and revealing glimpse of the unfiltered Donald Trump, as he considers standing as a candidate for President of the United States.
DVD / 2012 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 95 minutes
BETTER THIS WORLD
Directed by Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega
The story of two young Texans accused of intending to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention reveals the workings of the post 9/11 security state.
How did two boyhood friends from Midland, Texas wind up arrested on terrorism charges at the 2008 Republican National Convention? BETTER THIS WORLD follows the journey of David McKay (22) and Bradley Crowder (23) from political neophytes to accused domestic terrorists with a particular focus on the relationship they develop with a radical activist mentor in the six months leading up to their arrests. A dramatic story of idealism, loyalty, crime and betrayal, BETTER THIS WORLD goes to the heart of the War on Terror and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in post-9/11 America.
DVD / 2011 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 89 minutes
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Directed by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman
A personal essay revealing the passionate debates over identity and generational change inside today's American Jewish community.
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS is a groundbreaking personal exploration of the community and family divisions that are redefining American Jewish identity and politics. The filmmakers' own families are battlegrounds over loyalty to Israel, interpretations of the Holocaust, intermarriage, and a secret communist past.
Filmed in the United States and Israel, this first-person documentary begins with a near riot at a Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco, reveals the agonizing battle over divestment from Israel on a university campus, and shows the crackdown on dissent in Israel itself.
DVD / 2011 / (College, Adult) / 70 minutes
HOT COFFEE: IS JUSTICE BEING SERVED?
Directed by Susan Saladoff
Tells the truth about the McDonald's hot coffee case and exposes the influence of corporate America on our civil justice system.
Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman put it on one of his Top Ten lists. More than 15 years later, the McDonald's coffee case continues to be cited as a prime example of how citizens use "frivolous" lawsuits to take unfair advantage of America's legal system.
But is that an accurate portrayal of the facts? First-time filmmaker and former public interest lawyer Susan Saladoff uses the infamous legal battle that began with a spilled cup of coffee to investigate what's behind America's zeal for tort reform. By following four people whose lives were devastated by the attacks on our courts, this thought-provoking documentary challenges the assumptions Americans hold about "jackpot justice."
DVD / 2011 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 86 minutes
IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT
Directed by Marshall Curry
The Academy Award-nominated story of the radicalization of an environmental activist, from his involvement in and later disillusionment with Earth Liberation Front sabotage, to his eventual arrest by the FBI and incarceration as a domestic terrorist.
In December 2005, Daniel McGowan was arrested by Federal agents in a nationwide sweep of radical environmentalists involved with the Earth Liberation Front-- a group the FBI has called America's "number one domestic terrorism threat."
For years, the ELF--operating in separate anonymous cells without any central leadership--had launched spectacular arsons against dozens of businesses they accused of destroying the environment: timber companies, SUV dealerships, wild horse slaughterhouses, and a $12 million ski lodge at Vail, Colorado.
With the arrest of Daniel and thirteen others, the government had cracked what was probably the largest ELF cell in America and brought down the group responsible for the very first ELF arsons in this country.
IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT, directed by Marshall Curry (Street Fight), tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of this ELF cell, by focusing on the transformation and radicalization of one of its members.
Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thriller, the film interweaves a verite chronicle of Daniel on house arrest as he faces life in prison, with a dramatic recounting of the events that led to his involvement with the group. And along the way it asks hard questions about environmentalism, activism, and the way we define terrorism.
Drawing from striking archival footage -- much of it never before seen -- and intimate interviews with ELF members, and with the prosecutor and detective who were chasing them, IF A TREE FALLS explores the tumultuous period from 1995 until early 2001 when environmentalists were clashing with timber companies and law enforcement, and the word "terrorism" had not yet been altered by 9/11.
DVD / 2011 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 85 minutes
LIFE 8: SILK CEILING, PART 1
Ritu Bhardawaj is an Indian TV reporter who has broken through the silk ceiling which narrows the prospects for so many women in the Asia Pacific region.
In New Delhi, Ritu Bhardawaj is a star to the neighborhood children. Not only does she help with their homework, but she's also a glamorous TV reporter. For young Indian girls like Kiran and Monika, she's a role model in a society that doesn't favor ambitious girls. We follow Ritu as she makes her next big report - a documentary about the "silk ceiling" which hangs over the lives of many women in the Asia Pacific region, narrowing prospects and frustrating talent. Do politics and the law mean they're all fighting against impossible odds?
DVD / 2009 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes
LIFE 8: SILK CEILING, PART 2
Indian TV journalist Ritu Bhardawaj goes to Bihar to investigate the invisible barrier that confronts so many Asian women.
Indian TV journalist Ritu Bhardawaj reckons that the dancing girls have a special insight into the plight of women. That's because they're really men, dressed up for the Navratri festivities in the Indian state of Bihar. Ritu is visiting Bihar to continue her report on the invisible barrier which confronts so many Asian women. And if Anand and Shrish are right, women are still too often regarded as sex objects. But supposedly backward Bihar also offers a role model in Kiran Devi, a young housewife elected as village head, or sarpanch. Among her duties is judging local disputes, and so far she's settled at least 200 cases. When men, who are seen as protectors and providers, walk out of marriages, women can be left in legal limbo. But is it wise to press for reforms when Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise?
DVD / 2009 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes
WHICH WAY HOME - ORIGINAL
Directed by Rebecca Cammisa
The personal side of immigration as child migrants from Mexico and Central America risk everything to make it to the US riding atop freight trains.
As the United States continues to build a wall between itself and Mexico, WHICH WAY HOME shows the personal side of immigration through the eyes of children who face harrowing dangers with enormous courage and resourcefulness as they endeavor to make it to the United States.
The film follows several unaccompanied child migrants as they journey through Mexico en route to the U.S. on a freight train they call " The Beast." Director Rebecca Cammisa ("Sister Helen") tracks the stories of children like Olga and Freddy, nine-year old Hondurans who are desperately trying to reach their families in Minnesota, and Jose, a ten-year-old El Salvadoran who has been abandoned by smugglers and ends up alone in a Mexican detention center, and focuses on Kevin, a canny, streetwise 14-year-old Honduran, fleeing an abusive stepfather, and whose mother hopes that he will reach New York City and send money back to his family. These are stories of hope and courage, disappointment and sorrow. They are the ones you never hear about - the invisible ones.
DVD / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 83 minutes
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