They have also lived in New Orleans, LA and New York, NY. Dorothy Zellner reflects on her experience as one of the early organizers in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1967 when SNCC became all Black, Bob and Dottie Zellner designed and organized a white organizing push in the deep South called Grass Roots Organizing Work (GROW). Zellner was SNCCs first white field secretary. Bob Zellner. It was very difficult to gain their trust, because I remember when James Forman finally made it to the SNCC office. We've never dealt with basic racism and sexism of our country, and we really have to do that now. We loved him and he'd take us around to see Birmingham. Bob was an organizer of the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the first white southerner to serve as Field Secretary for the . By Julia Cheng. Zellner is very much still with us, and was present for a recent screening of the film in Montgomery, as he was 60 years to the day earlier. Trying to shift the destructive mentality that locked whites into racism instead . copiously beaten up, to the point of living with neurological sequelae. Fill out this simple form to send an email to a friend who might enjoy this page. 2022 Son of The South Owner, LLC All rights reserved. Abernathy (Cedric the Entertainer) will be guest preaching and Rosa Parks (Sharonne Lanier) will be in attendance. At one point, the ministers here that had worked with my father and Dr. King and Joe Lowery, they said, "Your Daddy's about to die and you need to go reconcile with him. As a new generation asks, What is my place in this struggle? Zellners work points to new answers. Young white and free with the world ahead of him, just as soon as he finishes his final group paper on race relations. That's when they beat me really badly, and almost hanged me that day. The actors did the best they could with a mediocre script. It's about the beginning of the movement, for me, as a white southerner. During Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 he traveled with Rita Schwerner while taking part in SNCC's and CORE's investigation of the disappearance of her husband Mickey, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. At heart, Son of the South is a coming-of-age story with the Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop. I didn't know the extent to which I would and the lifelong involvement, but I knew that I was destined to do that. 351 pages. 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. Dr. Bob Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 and raised in south Alabama, the second of five boys born to Methodist minister James Abraham Zellner and school teacher Ruby Hardy Zellner. Zellner, of Alabama, is the grandson of a Klan member. Yeah. He is the son and grandson of Ku Klux Klan members, but has risked his life in the fight to achieve The Second Emancipation. That's a tough thing. And dont worry about the savior bit: My bet is that McDews character will steal the show. Hence, he suggested that being a lawyer would be an appropriate choice of career for her. Movies. Help JWA continue to lift up Jewish womens stories, this month and every month, by. Son of the South will be available in select Theaters, On VOD & Digital February 5, 2021. Dr. William J. Barber II, the NAACP, voting rights groups, and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Later, Robert began operating as an independent speculator and eventually became the CEO of 'CitiCorp Futures Inc.' and 'CitiCorp Options.' As of 2014, she is involved in advocacy work on behalf of Palestinians. Mayor Adam O'Neal is at the right. (2013). All who were injured were charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. 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. They'd be entering into the present day, and letting bygones be bygones, and entering the new. He's an extremely good actor, and he really gets it. Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. During 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, Zellner coordinated volunteers and the Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi. While attending Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabamaan all-white Methodist schoolZellner was given a sociology assignment to research solutions to racial problems in the South. 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. It's like when President Obama was elected, everybody said, "Oh, we can relax now," and everybody relaxed and look what happened. You go there, there's literally nothing there. These are incredible actors in this movie. Thats sad and infuriating. They had books and the mom was throwing the books in the fire. This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Civil Rights activist Bob Zellner to share his fight with Pensacola, Pensacola business leaders band together to fight systemic injustice, Elizabeth Eckford in Pensacola to share how she braved hate as one of the Little Rock Nine. One is Jewish and from the North, the other Southern and the son of a Methodist minister. Those with a casual knowledge of the movement may be misled by the stereotypes of names and geographies to assume that Zellner is the Northern Jew and McDew a Black Southerner. How scary was that? Famous for battles with segregationist lynch mobs, violent police, and the KKK, Zellner is also an organizer who brought Black and white Southern working people together in the GROW Project, including Klan members, on terms of equality and respect. 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. Well, we bonded right away and he asked me questions and so forth, and I talked to him about it, but I think we were extremely lucky to get Lucas Till to play this role. He suffered brain damage and post traumatic stress from the physical abuse inflicted upon him. Kathleen graduated from the Northern Illinois University College of Law in 1981 and then worked for a 2nd District Appellate Court justice and several large law firms. Zellner, Bob, and Constance Curry. This article "Bob Zellner" is from Wikipedia. SNCC was our life. John Robert "Bob" Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 in Jay, Florida. 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. I was able to integrate with SNCC staff because I went to the most dangerous places and had to be beaten and threatened with a lynching along with all the rest of the sisters and brothers in SNCC, Zellner said. I said, "When are they coming?" 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. Two of those passengers, Catherine Burks-Brooks and Bernard Lafayette, along with later Freedom Rider Earnest Rip Patton, were aboard a replica bus arriving at the exact moment 10:23 a.m. that they had 60 years earlier. The first time, he witnessed the Klansmen and their sympathizers mercilessly beat the Freedom Riders in a melee made possible by the pre-arranged absence of the Montgomery police. 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. Robert J Zellner, age 62, of Oshkosh, passed away at his home on Tuesday June 21, 2022. The attack would lead Zellner, then a student at nearby Huntingdon College with an emerging interest in the Black freedom struggle, from an observer to a movement participant. In his book, Zellner writes that hes joining the movement not just because its the right thing to do, but also because its necessary for white people to do, after becoming convinced that the ills of segregation hold back not only Black people but white. Left largely unexplored is McDew, Black and Jewish from Ohio and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in its earliest, and most dangerous, days, who died in 2018. 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. Photo by Julia Cheng. Mr. Zellner became SNCCs first white field secretary and was arrested 18 times with John Lewis and the Freedom Riders. Zellners lectures are filled with death-defying and often humorous accounts from these critical moments in history. Bob Zellner, civil rights activist and author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, sent this . While working on the dissertation, he taught the History of Activism at Rosemont College, PA. and Southampton College of Long Island University. It was at these meetings that Zellner met SNCC members for the first time. This changed when one day, Robert came to know that he might have to move to Vietnam. 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. I met Barry through Judy Irola and she said that he was from Montgomery, graduated Sydney Lanier. After witnessing a white activist brutally beaten by police, Zeller decided to join the movement "to get my own freedom," he says. Raised in southern Alabama, he was the second of five boys born to Methodist minister James Abraham Zellner and school teacher Ruby Hardy Zellner. When his father broke away from the Klan, his mother made Sunday school shirts from the white robes. Doug Tanner, the tour takes hundreds of Senators and Congresswomen and men to Alabama every year to commemorate Bloody Sunday and the passage of the 1965 Voters Rights bill. They have a daughter named Anne Zellner, who is a lawyer at the firm 'Ryley Carlock & Applewhite' in Denver. They work all over the country but right now, primarily in seven states in the. (2003). Living With Others: Challenges and Promises. They brag on all the movies that have been shot there, but not Spike Lee and Barry Alexander Brown shooting Son of the South. Civil rights activist Robert Zellner tells Gianna about growing up in Montgomery, Alabama during the Civil Rights movement shortly after the premiere of "Son of The South," based on Zellner's autobiography, "The Wrong Side of Murder Creek." The grandson of a Klansmen, Zellner talks about how & why his father chose family disownment and left the Klu Klux Klan. Part of it is that Jeff Sessions is alumni of Huntingdon College. In a voiceover, Zellner muses, A lot of white folks have a short fuse when it comes to civil rights. But they would be mistaken. It got me into thinking about nonviolence. Bio | Video | Transcript. Bob Zellner was white. (2008) edited by Constance Curry and forward by Julian Bond. (Viewed on March 2, 2023) . Still, its as good a telling as you ever get from a major motion picture, capturing the bona fides Brown aspired to achieve. Lucas Till stars in "Son of the South," playing Bob Zellner, a fledgling civil rights activist from Alabama. The October League also developed a rural strategy. Well, my grandfather, he never changed his stance about supporting the Ku Klux Klan. Talk to me a little bit about the riot and, we're just blocks away from where that happened. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather. 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. What he did do was, when my father left the KU Klux Klan, he had disowned my father. The street was covered with blood and broken glass. 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. A 1957 graduation speaker at Murphy High School in Mobile, he received a BA from Huntingdon College, Montgomery, Alabama in 1961 with highest honors . She handled fundraising and helped screen volunteers for Freedom Summer. I hope it's a young people's movie and I really hope that it comes through as a women's movie, because SNCC was led by strong women. She was the wife of the late Elmer C. Palmer and the late Lester C. Zellner. Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions, https://wikitia.com/index.php?title=Bob_Zellner&oldid=90263. . And my father did, and he told me about it later on. Over 50 years later, Mr. Zellner and his wife Dottie (who met and married working for SNCC) are still activists/organizers working with the North Carolina Forward Together Moral Movement and Rev. Well, the way I first met Barry Alexander Brown is in New York City, when we were both working on different kinds of films and movies. Chautauqua lecture essay. Well, the paradigm, it is just the story of one of our freedom songs we had in the movement, that freedom is a constant struggle, because after the Civil Rights Movement, we never thought that women's rights would be challenged again, or that anyone would try to restrict the vote to white people ever again, or labor rights would be restricted, but what's happened is that the Civil Rights Movement, there was tremendous reaction against the Civil Rights Movement and the right wing really dug in and did the kind of grassroots community organizing that the movement had done. Born in Alabama on 5 April 1939, John Robert Zellner was the second of James Abraham Zellner and Ruby Hardy Zellners five sons. 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 . (1961-1967). Portada; Nosotros. At the Freedom Rides Museum: SNCC field secretary Bob Zellner meets with the Forwards Robin Washington in front of the Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The story of these lynchings is told in the motion picture Mississippi Burning. Son of the South tells how Zellner chose to work for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. In 1966 SNCC voted to expel white activists from its organization, and although Zellner and his wife, Dorothy Miller Zellner, who also worked for SNCC, appealed, SNCCs central committee rejected their request for reinstatement. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace. 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