The October League also developed a rural strategy. Tell me a little bit about the importance of shooting right here, where all of this really happened. It was at these meetings that Zellner met SNCC members for the first time. Their south-wide strike achieved a rise in the price they were paid for their wood. Zellner Has Promised Big Revelations in the Case Kathleen Zellner, in a photo she posted on Facebook. Theres so much more to Bob Zellners life than this movie reflects. 2008. Bob Zellner is the hero of "A Son of the South", by Barry Alexander Brown. (2003). While teaching in the Hamptons, Bob worked with the Shinnecock Nation on a campaign to stop the bulldozing of ancestral burial grounds for an upscale housing sub-division in Southampton, New York. Forman said that he hoped [his] story holds up., Zellner understood that the Civil Rights Movement belonged to young Black southerners, but he was also fighting for [his] own rights as wellI was joining the movement to establish my own right to fight for what I believed in., James Forman and Bob and Dottie Miller (Zellner) in Danville, Virginia, 1963, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement 177, dektol.wordpress.com. Wikitia is not affiliated to Wikimedia Foundation, Honorary Doctor of Laws, St. Joseph College, New York (2002). Thats sad and infuriating. John Robert Zellner (born April 5th, 1939) was the first white southerner to serve as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). You can't not take a position in this. Memorial services will be at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday,. The white supremacists and the neo-Nazis and all the things that have been going on lately that feel like we're almost fighting this battle again. Dorothy Miller Zellner The courage and vision that they shared of a world not stunted by racism inspired me. After 50 years of an entertainment industry and news media that constantly shows blatant violence against Black people nonviolently protesting its no longer shocking or surprising. Mr. Zellner became SNCC's first white field secretary and was arrested 18 times with John Lewis and the Freedom Riders. So again, does a white Alabaman directing the story of another white Alabaman smack of saviorism? That was incredible. John Seigenthaler had been beaten in the head with a pipe and kicked her under a car for dead. When it comes to gender, frankly, the film got on my nerves. In 1962, Zellner organized workshops on nonviolence for students at Talladega College in Alabama, preparing students for lunch counter sit-ins and marches. I had been banned from campus for 40 years, not allowed to come back. During 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, Zellner coordinated volunteers and the Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi. piggly wiggly moss point . After teaching at Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, Bob was the first white southerner to serve as Field Secretary for SNCC ("Snick"), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. MONTGOMERY, Alabama The funniest line in the true-life story behind the Spike Lee-executive produced Civil Rights movement biopic, Son of the South, is in Yiddish. Back then, Robert was more interested in the commodity markets but was equally fascinated to know a different perspective of the supply and demand chain. Rencontre avec un homme de convictions. She lectures and writes frequently about the civil rights movement and co-edited Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. Hence, Robert began searching for a new research fellowship program. It was a part of Barry's dream for the movie that it would be shot in Alabama, that it wouldn't be a real Alabama movie with real Alabama people. Its Zellner whos The Son of the South a white preachers kid from Alabama and the grandson of a Klansman. Meeting at a ramshackle one-room office in Mississippi, he tells Zellner (played by MacGyver reboot star Lucas Till) that everything you need is in that briefcase before lighting out to parts unknown and from the rest of the film. Forman said that he hoped [his] story holds up., Zellner understood that the Civil Rights Movement belonged to young Black southerners, but he was also fighting for [his] own rights as wellI was joining the movement to establish my own right to fight for what I believed in.. They have a daughter named Anne Zellner, who is a lawyer at the firm 'Ryley Carlock & Applewhite' in Denver. Founded by Congressman John Lewis and Methodist minister Rev. We had to go to Tuskegee." How scary was that? Zellner witnessed the beatings, leading him to become a full-time Civil Rights worker. Brian Dennehy playing my grandfather. Thats because the Jewish half of what could have been a hilarious-yet-gripping buddy film was largely written out. Dorothy "Dottie" Miller Zellner is an American human rights activist, feminist, editor, lecturer, and writer. It's about young people and it's especially about the strength and power of women, not only in the Civil Rights Movement, but then our nation in general. He said, "I don't know." Magnum Photos, Inc. c1963 Danny Lyons. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense." The beautiful thing about a biopic is that in less than two hours you can travel through a lifetime. They work alongside Common Power, an organization that encourages civic action through community, education and investment in a next-generation of leaders. School of Social Service Administration Request Speaker. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search. Jim Forman arrived a week later with a tape recorder. His commitment to the Movement was continually, and often violently, tested by white supremacists. The SNCC workers joined the students in front of City Hall to pray, and Zellner, the protests only white participant, was attacked and severely beaten by several white men while local police watched and FBI agents took notes. All were willing to die and some actually gave their lives in the struggle for freedom. Because President West, Cam West, had taken a very courageous stand when the book came out in 2008. Name: Zellner, Bob (1939-) Historical Note: John Robert Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 in Jay, Florida and grew up in small towns throughout south Alabama. We're here, we're here in Montgomery. This page was last edited on 31 March 2021, at 08:29. The Woodcutters Union Campaign, from 1967 to 1979 mobilized thousands of black and white pulp and timber workers. And Daddy said, he even put me back in the will. And sometimes when I tell my university students that I was in jail with Dr. King and was mentored by Rosa Parks and written about by Eleanor Roosevelt in her last book, they say, "Did you meet Harriet Tubman or Abraham Lincoln?" At twenty-two, he rode from Atlanta, Georgia to Albany Georgia on the Central Georgia Railroad on December 10, 1961. Robert and Kathleen married soon after her first semester ended. 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. Mayor Adam O'Neal is at the right. That made him a special target for the mob that greeted young Black protesters. Born in Alabama in 1939, Bob Zellner has spent the better part of his nearly 82 years in and around the Alabama Gulf Coast. Zellner also campaigned for social justice in Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia. When he and his wife Dorothy "Dottie" Zellner presented the proposal for a " GROW " ( Grassroots Organizing Work) project, it was turned down. Happy Womens History Month! Meeting them then and now was Zellner. 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. 2022 Son of The South Owner, LLC All rights reserved. We brought people together across all kinds of barriers and lines, and now we can do it again to save our democracy. He later moved to Wilson, North Carolina. The writer-director Barry Alexander Brown constantly reiterates how hard it is for white people to act against the mob and recognize the humanity of Black people. A senior paper.. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather. When SNCC became an all-black organization in 1967, 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 called GROW, Grass Roots Organizing Work, also called Get Rid Of Wallace. While in Russia, he lived and worked with a group of black gospel singers who were also helping the resistance, and when he returned to the United States, he repudiated his racist beliefs. 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. Still, its as good a telling as you ever get from a major motion picture, capturing the bona fides Brown aspired to achieve. Well, Barry showed his genius as a script writer and an editor and a filmmaker. 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. Bob Zellner. Zellner attended W.S. That's really good. He never felt any personal animosity from Stokely or any of the old hands, but [he] did feel it from some of the newer people. When he and his wife Dorothy Dottie Zellner presented the proposal for a GROW (Grassroots Organizing Work) project, it was turned down. 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. Maybe because it concentrates on a personal journey and an authentic Alabama one, its free from the stilted, hold-your-hand language of offerings such as Ava DuVernays Selma, in which Martin Luther King is told John Lewis from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is here to see you, with Kings aides pronouncing each syllable in a slow staccato as opposed to a quick Snick that they more likely would have said, and which mainstream audiences wouldnt have likely understood. This page was last edited on 16 May 2021, at 02:30. 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. John Robert "Bob" Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 in Jay, Florida. We are providing this brief biography for Director and Inspiration: Bob Zellner autographs his book, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, while chatting with Barry Alexander Brown, the director of Son of the South, a film executive produced by Spike Lee about Zellners work in the Civil Rights Movement. For those wondering how to fight for equality, combat prejudice, and move past polarized politics, his work across racial and political lines is crucial, and his inspiring stories have lessons and examples. Zellner decides he and his friends need to actually go and attend service at the Black church where Rev. Zellner recruited white southerners to join the Civil Rights Movement through his role as a campus traveler. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. Whatever was necessary was what I had to do, and then going to the hospital and seeing James Zwerg and saying, "Your Freedom Ride's over." There's absolutely no doubt about it. We had to be, at least tactically, non-violent. That may lead to a TV series, Zellner said. (2013). it's okay, but you know M.O. It's hard to separate because they're your family. Hollywood loves to see Black women and men brutalized on screen and Son of the South isnt afraid to go there. 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." She is presently identified as Anne Zellner Sherwood and lives in Denver, Colorado. Well, I was very lucky that I was mentored by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Alabama with my new wife Pamela Smith to work with Senator Doug Jones and other southern progressives to, once and for all, confront our nation's foundational history of genocide against native peoples . 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. How was it watching your hanging play out on camera? Zellner brings his girlfriend Carol Ann (Lucy Hale) along. The program is being organized by The Equity Project Alliance. Carol Ann, the white girlfriend, is virtuous, saving herself for marriage, and Joanne, the light-skinned Black woman who not only speaks five languages, is a professor and lived in Paris, visits Zellners room in the middle of the night with a Mai Tai and jumps into bed with a man whose motto is, Ill try anything three times. It seems as if these characters were just thrown in to break up the narrative with a love story, which doesnt work. Once the opening credits finally end, the film flashes back to the previous year. Zellner worked as a nurse for several years before joining the Center for Constitutional Rights in 1984. Get notified about exclusive offers every week! we loved all of that. By Bob Zellner with Constance Curry. Excerpts from our interview with civil rights activist Bob Zellner. After his eighteenth arrest, Bob and his partner, Elizabeth Pamela Smith have moved back to his home state of Alabama, where they worked to elect Senator Doug Jones and support the work of EJI, Bryan Stevensons Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery. Somebody hands you a briefcase and that's the extent of SNCC. Till is known for his work in CBS reboot of "MacGyver" and the movie "X-Men . His commitment to the Movement was continually, and often violently, tested by white supremacists. From 1994 to 2003 Zellner taught History as an adjunct Professor at Stony Brook Southampton|Southampton College of Long Island University in Southampton, New York. He said, "I'm not coming back. Bob Zellner From Wikitia John Robert Zellner (born April 5th, 1939) was the first white southerner to serve as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). By the time we reached the bus station down here, the mob had already really massacred the press. All who were injured were charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. 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). From 2005 to the present Bob has traveled with the Faith & Politics Congressional Tours, as a featured speaker. In 1962, Zellner organized workshops on nonviolence for students at Talladega College in Alabama, preparing students for lunch counter sit-ins and marches. 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. John Robert Zellner (born April 5, 1939) is an American civil rights activist. So you went to Atlanta to SNCC, right? Bob Zellner. Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism. If you fought back, you'd just continue the enmity. Zellner, a white undergraduate student who wanted to fight for the equality and rights for African-Americans, began his lifework in that moment, later becoming the first white field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. There was a time in American cinema where the portrayal of Black bodies being brutalized by white racists was shocking. In 1963, he helped integrate the library and lunch counters in the segregated mill town of Danville, Virginia, the last capitol of the Confederacy. by JWA StaffOur work to expand the Encyclopedia is ongoing. Young white and free with the world ahead of him, just as soon as he finishes his final group paper on race relations. Alex is survived by his wife . It'. The moral high ground was that we were not going to fight back. It's just a very strong, terrible disease that people can't get over. 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. It reminded me of Nazi Germany. Zellner was SNCCs first white field secretary. At that time, the 'Duke' doctoral fellow was writing a thesis on the federal funds market. It's like, yeah-. Well, my grandfather, he never changed his stance about supporting the Ku Klux Klan. Zellner, of Alabama, is the grandson of a Klan member. Disowned by his family, his father became a minister and implemented his teachings into his own family, taking a major trip from being a southern racist to being a human being, Zellner described. Find Bob Zellner's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading online directory for contact information. Born in Alabama on 5 April 1939, John Robert Zellner was the second of James Abraham Zellner and Ruby Hardy Zellners five sons. In 1998, she became director of publications and development for the Queens College School of Law. When Bob was in college he was assigned to write a paper on the aftermath of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by iconic activist Rosa Parks, and the race relations . 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. 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. And there's the moment, where Rosa Parks says to you, not making a choice is making a choice and there's something going to happen to you where you're going to have to jump in and make a decision on that. Bob Zellner's career as a civil rights activist, beginning in 1955 as a Murphy High School student, spans nearly seven decades. When we were kids, Granddaddy, he was just a sweet old man. Until the time . It's very sad that Huntingdon College, where a huge part of the script takes place, that they weren't able to bring themselves to welcome us to shoot on the campus. In the fall of 1963, Zellner moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts with her then husband, Bob Zellner, to run the Northeast Regional Office of SNCC. Kathleen had met Robert for the first time in Missouri. The film begins with a bloodied and beaten Zellner, riding in the back of a 57 Chevy with a group of fellow sons of the South, on his way to what could be his own lynching. The bitterness for the stock markets intensified in his family after the 'Wall Street crash of 1929. As co-editor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's newsletter, the Student Voice, Dorothy Miller Zellner helped craft the organization's message and report on stories suppressed by the mainstream media.Zellner was arrested at a CORE demonstration in Miami in 1960 and participated in sit-ins in New Orleans before joining Julian Bond as co-editor of the Student Voice, which . They brag on all the movies that have been shot there, but not Spike Lee and Barry Alexander Brown shooting Son of the South. SNCC Field Secretary Arrested for Vagrancy While Walking on Campus in Montgomery, Alabama, January 9, [1963], crmvet.org crmvet.org, Click Here to View Document We've been working on it for a long time. The script called for him to needle Zellner about being white and regard him with suspicion until Zellner proved himself, something the real McDew didnt agree to because it just wasnt true, both Brown and the real Zellner told me. And my father did, and he told me about it later on. 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. Zellner and four other students (later known as the Huntingdon Five) outraged school authorities, however, when they began attending civil rights meetings with Black students from what was then Alabama State College for Negroes. Now we can do it again to save our democracy Sunday, hard to separate because 're. Where all of this really happened New York ( 2002 ) 'd just continue the enmity searching a... Her first semester ended if you fought back, you 'd just continue enmity. 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