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. Bob Zellner SNCC/NAACP, GROW, 1959-2020, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Virginia Current Residence: Fairhope, AL . I think all five of us students knew which side was correct and which side was right, which side was Christian, which side was American, constitutional and which side was terrorist and unconstitutional. How could you not get involved with that? Jim Forman arrived a week later with a tape recorder. He sounded country and he looked country. He brings to life heartbreaks as well as victories of the Civil Rights Era in a way that empowers and instructs the modern-day movement. Instead, he chose to be an academic. At the screening, Brown explained his goal was to make as authentic an Alabama film as possible; a feat harrowingly achieved in the bus station scene shot at the actual site of the attack. It was a hellish scene. In 1991 he started a Ph.D. program in History at Tulane . Civil Rights activist Bob Zellner to share his fight with Pensacola. The men attempted to drag Zellner away from the other protesters, but Zellner clung to a railing until police finally pulled him off to arrest him, along with the other SNCC workers and 119 students. And he said, "I know, we've written our wills." They have also lived in New Orleans, LA and New York, NY. Also, at the Montgomery screening, both audience members and Zellner himself noted that Son of the South ends abruptly, with the movements battles, and Zellners own, far from resolved. (2013). In 2014, Zellner was featured in TIME Magazine as one of 17 "living legends" of the Civil Rights Movement to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. At 'Fed Atlanta,' Robert got acquainted with a research fellow from 'Duke University' who was pursuing the same doctoral program. He and the other members of the Equity Project Alliance believe it's important to remind everyone that the fight hasn't ended and we need to look at equity and inclusion and continue to understand how these systems are still very serious remnants of our dark past. The moral high ground was that we were not going to fight back. By the time we reached the bus station down here, the mob had already really massacred the press. By Bob Zellner with Constance Curry. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Kathleen had met Robert for the first time in Missouri. Jim Forman arrived a week later with a tape recorder. Its funny, director Barry Alexander Brown, who was born in England and raised in Montgomery, said of dichotomies like that and of his adopted state of Alabama in general. Although he occasionally uses a broad brush dipped in primary colors while fashioning his admiring portrait of Bob Zellner, the grandson of a Ku Klux Klansman who improbably evolved into a civil . Find Bob Zellner's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading online directory for contact information. Listening to Bob Zellner speaking about organizing working class and poor white people. I think Barry's gone way out of his way to involve young people, especially young, talented, famous people among young people. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense." Winner of the 2009 Lillian Smith Book Award Even forty years after the civil rights movement, the transition from son and grandson of Klansmen to field secretary of SNCC seems quite a journey. Since 2014, he also tours twice a year with Project Pilgrimage as a Traveling Historian. 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. Robert and Kathleen married soon after her first semester ended. 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. Zellner recruited white southerners to join the Civil Rights Movement through his role as a campus traveler. Zellner, Bob, and Constance Curry. He received his PhD at the age of 24 years. 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. In a voiceover, Zellner muses, A lot of white folks have a short fuse when it comes to civil rights. Zellner worked as a nurse for several years before joining the Center for Constitutional Rights in 1984. Bob Zellner (left) greets students after chapel. Bob Zellner is a veteran of the Civil Rights movement. 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." We have to know U.S. history because if we don't know where we came from we won't know where we're going, Zellner said. 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. (2012). Kathleen had met Robert for the first time in Missouri. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. 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. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense.. Marriage to Elizabeth Pamela Smith. Soon after, he was appointed one of the first field secretaries and certainly the first Southern white one of the nascent SNCC. He took a very courageous stand in 2008 and now have things that have gone so far backwards that he's not able to invite this film crew back to Huntingdon to shoot on the campus. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather. The Woodcutters Union Campaign, from 1967 to 1979 mobilized thousands of black and white pulp and timber workers. That was incredible. Once the opening credits finally end, the film flashes back to the previous year. 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. If you fought back, you'd just continue the enmity. Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site. These are incredible actors in this movie. We had to go to Tuskegee." 4. Not exactly, if you consider that neither are typical white Alabamans. Just because a movie has Spike Lees name attached to it, doesnt mean its gonna be revolutionary. This page was last edited on 31 March 2021, at 08:29. While focusing on breaking the hold of George Wallace and the KKK on poor and working-class white people across the south, Bob Zellner debated George Wallace at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts when Wallace ran for president in 1968. Alas, thats the line left out of the movie, with McDews character cut out at that point. At least the father and son, a reconciliation. Bob Zellner is an Organizer of the Ella Baker Organizing School South BOSS at North Carolina NAACP. I hope they take away that people have, after this movie, is that it's a young people's movie. She is presently identified as Anne Zellner Sherwood and lives in Denver, Colorado. 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. Zellner attended W.S. During the protests in McComb, a person attempted to pull out his eyeballs. School of Social Service As a result, those qualities were ascribed to another character and McDews role significantly diminished. 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 . Robert always considered Kathleen a strong-willed lady and someone with the ability to push her opinions firmly. All were willing to die and some actually gave their lives in the struggle for freedom. Trump and the others want to bring racism back to the open, so that's a good thing. Marketing Toolkit. The screening was held on the 60th anniversary May 20 of the day Klan members attacked Freedom Riders in Montgomery, an incident witnessed by Zellner that led him to join the Civil Rights Movement full-time. 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. I hope it does, and if so, I have a suggestion: Bring back the character of McDew to make a buddy show, about a Black Jewish guy from the North teamed up with the white grandson of a Klansman, working for SNCC in the most dangerous days of the movement. GROW organized poor whites in the rural Deep South, many of whom were well accustomed to the Ku Klux Klan in their communities. Zellner recruited white southerners to join the Civil Rights Movement through his role as a campus traveler. His organizing work paid off, with working class rallies with as many as two thousand black and white people out in a cow pastureold Mississippi rednecks with the whip antennas and [George] Wallace stickers on their trucks, standing next to black folks, all of them talking about how the power structure was holding them down.61 This enticed OL leaders, among others in the NCM, to recruit Zellner for organizing Deep South trade unionists and reforming Klansmen.[3]. His story is coming to Pensacola. Turns out, Bob Zellners granddaddy is a head Klansman and is part of the posse. 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. Wikitia is not affiliated to Wikimedia Foundation, Honorary Doctor of Laws, St. Joseph College, New York (2002). Updated: Jan 11, 2021 / 12:19 PM CST. Part of Bobs job description was to take photographs and write articles for SNCCs Student Voice newspaper. Thats because the Jewish half of what could have been a hilarious-yet-gripping buddy film was largely written out. Zellners time in SNCC, as a member of the original staff, meant he was working with Civil Rights Movement legends Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and Rosa Parks. And he said, "Oh no, when we're able to, we get back on the bus." Schumers mother was a volunteer on Zellners State Senate campaign, so both of them organized vigorously for her son, the future US Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Bob Zellner. 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. I would have loved to see Zellners relationship in the later years of SNCC when the movement evolved and Bobby Seale pushed to shift SNCCs strategy and have the white members focusing on educating white folks instead of building a multi-racial movement. Yeah, well, there was both the moral and the practical aspects of it. Born in Alabama on 5 April 1939, John Robert Zellner was the second of James Abraham Zellner and Ruby Hardy Zellner's five sons. (1961-1967). During this election, a fellow Democrat, Chuck Schumer from Brooklyn, was running for the US Senate. As a new generation asks, What is my place in this struggle? Zellners work points to new answers. And now we have to say, "Well, unfortunately we weren't able to shoot there. After witnessing a white activist brutally beaten by police, Zeller decided to join the movement "to get my own freedom," he says. One of my brothers has reverted to be a Trump supporter and a Roy Moore supporter, and just as mean as he can possibly be, and he's a deacon of the church. What do you hope is to take away from this, when people see this movie? Bob Zellner is known for Son of the South (2020), Breath of Freedom (2014) and Moyers & Company (2012). The film does convey the real dangers Zellner experienced, including a near-lynching, as well as his complicated relationship with his Klansman grandfather (Brian Dennehy, in his last major role), who threatens to himself shoot Zellner if he continues his activism, while at the same time making arrangements for a family dinner. I thought I'd be able to go into graduate school, maybe be a minister or something and have a more normal life, but it was not a normal time. 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. 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