While working on the dissertation, he taught the History of Activism at Rosemont College, PA. and Southampton College of Long Island University. Jealous, Ann Todd, and Caroline T. Haskell. In the mid-1970s, the couple moved to Canada briefly but later moved back to the US. I said, "When are you coming back?" Were happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. 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. How was it watching your hanging play out on camera? His race proved to be useful for SNCC as he forged connections with powerful whites in rural communities that were sympathetic to their organizing. The film "Mississippi Burning" so distorted the role of the FBI in the movement that Bob toured college campuses lecturing on the real history of the struggle. It's amazing how they can reconcile those things. did bob zellner marry joanne. Learn more about our use of cookies: cookie policy. Dorothy Zellner reflects on her experience as one of the early organizers in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). It was very difficult to gain their trust, because I remember when James Forman finally made it to the SNCC office. However, he still planned to move to Vietnam. Living With Others: Challenges and Promises. Bob Zellner is the hero of "A Son of the South", by Barry Alexander Brown. An Evening with Bob Zellner: Civil Rights Activist is being held at Gateway Church of Christ on Feb. 25 and will feature a look at the movie based on his life, Son of the South." Bob Zellner [00:00], Volume 24, Highlander, SSOC, and Organizing in the White Community: We Knew That We Were Not Free, SNCC 50th Anniversary Conference, 2010, California Newsreel, Click Here to View Document Robert grew up as a well-learned person and studied a lot of subjects, such as medicine and art. Magnum Photos, Inc. c1963 Danny Lyons. And he said, "Oh good. Robert J Zellner, age 62, of Oshkosh, passed away at his home on Tuesday June 21, 2022. I was very lucky, being a student of sociology and psychology, that it was Rosa Parks who challenged me and said, "You can't study this forever, and something's going to happen in front of you someday and you're going to have to decide which side are you really you? 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. 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 hope that's the takeaway. . The program is being organized by The Equity Project Alliance. It was painful. 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. But the post-traumatic stress is stressful for me and also for my partner, my . 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. I was privileged to meet Bob Zellner at the Virginia Festival of the Book in March of 2010. A senior paper.. Son of the South tells how Zellner chose to work for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. Zellners Methodist preacher dad arrives for an impromptu family meeting in the middle of the street, right in between the college students and the KKK. SNCC was our life. I hope they take away that people have, after this movie, is that it's a young people's movie. His commitment to the Movement was continually, and often violently, tested by white supremacists. Zellners first job out of college was to be Counselor and staff at Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School located in Monteagle, Tennessee for the summer of 1961. In the way too long Freedom Rider scene, not only does the audience witness Black women getting stomped in the street and punched in the face by white men, they get pulverized by white women using purses with bricks inside them as weapons. 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 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. School of Social Service Administration Part of it is that Jeff Sessions is alumni of Huntingdon College. Civil Rights activist Bob Zellner to share his fight with Pensacola. I liked him because he was the perfect good ole white boy, a teetotal white country boy, with the accent and the background of the real rural South. Those were people that you had to take a tremendous risk to follow them. Shortly, Zeller wound up being hired by SNCC to conduct outreach to Southern whites. Zellner himself became a candidate in 1998 while teaching Civil Rights History at LIU in eastern Long Island. His father was a doctor and had absolutely no interest in share trading or speculating, in spite of the fact that Robert's grandfather was a speculator. His first campaign through SCEF was the GROW project, Grass Roots Organizing Work, in rural towns such as Laurel, Mississippi. You can't not take a position in this. Zellner, Bob Biography: Robert Zellner was born April 5, 1939 in southern Alabama. She had moved to Wisconsin to attend 'Marquette University.' How could you not get involved with that? February 27, 2023 By restaurants on the water in st clair shores By restaurants on the water in st clair shores We had to be, at least tactically, non-violent. We've been working on it for a long time. 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. 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. That made him a special target for the mob that greeted young Black protesters. These are incredible actors in this movie. There was a time in American cinema where the portrayal of Black bodies being brutalized by white racists was shocking. I mean, it is the devil you know? 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. John Seigenthaler had been beaten in the head with a pipe and kicked her under a car for dead. While not quite holding a Black card, Brown was the editor on BlacKkKlansman and has collaborated with Lee for decades, going back to School Daze and Do the Right Thing.. The Annual Faith and Politics Congressional Pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama and other sites of the freedom struggle was led by the Honorable John Lewis and filmed by Robin Smith, award winning documentary director and producer and president and founder of VideoAction. 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?" He was an English major for a while. Like 2019s Green Book, Im sure Son of the South will make well-meaning white folks feel like they arent one of the racist ones. So it was a moral necessity and a practical necessity. And dont worry about the savior bit: My bet is that McDews character will steal the show. Select this result to view Linda R Zellner's phone number, address, and more. Jeanine is a Writer, Actor, member SAG/AFTRA, AEA, Podcast host, Producer, CEO VisAbleBlackWoman Productions, Certified Health Coach and Conscious Dance facilitator. Wikitia is not affiliated to Wikimedia Foundation, Honorary Doctor of Laws, St. Joseph College, New York (2002). It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense.. 351 pages. Born January 28, 1962, in Green Bay, he is the son of Mary Ellen (Day) Zellner and the late Bob Zellner. Until the time of 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. The violence that Zellner and his colleagues were subjected to was astounding. Tell me about what your feelings were during that situation? On May 20, 1961, a busload of Freedom Riders arrived to a waiting mob at Montgomerys Greyhound Station, now the Freedom Rides Museum. 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." Happy Womens History Month! 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. How could you not make a decision at that point? The KKK arrives at the University to set those five white boys straight. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search. In 1963, he helped integrate the library and lunch counters in the segregated mill town of Danville, Virginia, the last capitol of the Confederacy. Bob Zellner. Troopers attacked Dr. Zellner and members of the tribe who were protecting ancestral burial grounds from developer's bulldozers. 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. Trump and the others want to bring racism back to the open, so that's a good thing. 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 . Bob Zellner is an influential leader in the Civil Rights Movement. That may lead to a TV series, Zellner said. I guess I was very lucky, because early on, our first staff meeting actually in SNCC, was in McComb, Mississippi. Beginning in the mid-sixties Bob worked on documentary and feature films, traveling to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. 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. In December 1961, Bob took part in Freedom Rides and was subsequently jailed with Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Georgia. 2022 Son of The South Owner, LLC All rights reserved. Robert is from Florida. Today, MacQueen believes racism has evolved from outright racism to subtle racism such as implicit bias. He also Investigated the murders of three civil rights workers with Rita Schwerner. In one of her interviews, Kathleen mentioned that she had binge-watched the 2015 'Netflix' series 'Making a Murderer' with Robert on their home theater and was intrigued. 0 likes. Young white and free with the world ahead of him, just as soon as he finishes his final group paper on race relations. The story of these lynchings is told in the motion picture Mississippi Burning. During 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, Zellner coordinated volunteers and the Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi. 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. Zellner and O'Neal and their supporters have twice walked the 283-mile trek from North Carolina to Washington D.C. to raise awareness. He handed me the briefcase and he said, "I'll be leaving now." 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. 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. SNCC gets word about the incident and invites Zellner to the home of civil rights activists Virginia (Julia Ormond) and Clifford Durr (Greg Thornton) for a friendly dinner where the Durrs and Rosa Parks attempt to recruit Zellner to SNCC. Witnessing History: Former SNCC field secretary Bob Zellner stands next to a poster of Son of the South, a film about his work in the Civil Rights Movement, at a screening in Montgomery, Alabama. Robert always considered Kathleen a strong-willed lady and someone with the ability to push her opinions firmly. Edited by Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell. 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. Zellners peers and teacher remind him of the risks of going to a Black church, but Zellner blows everyone off and convinces his four classmates to attend the service with him. Lives in Wilson, North Carolina. Bob Zellner. Because they were instructed to prioritize urban areas like Atlanta, they relied on developing regional contacts to build their organization in the countryside. The rising sentiment in 1965 that whites should organize among whites challenged Zellner. 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. how much is bob tiffin worth; did bob zellner marry joanne. She handled fundraising and helped screen volunteers for Freedom Summer. This page was last edited on 31 March 2021, at 08:29. After witnessing a white activist brutally beaten by police, Zeller decided to join the movement "to get my own freedom," he says. When it comes to gender, frankly, the film got on my nerves. Well, the one thing that I would like to be sure of, is that young people hear about this movie. 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 he is still at it today, he nearly lost it many times in the process. Jeanine's mission, centering Black women's stories to preserve our legacies. Youre going to love SNCC, she told him. Robert completed his tenure in Atlanta and went back to the 'University of Florida,' where he completed his master's thesis on consumer credit. In 2005, Bob Zellner was a featured Civil Rights Luminary in the award winning documentary "Come Walk in My Shoes". If we had wanted to create him, we couldnt have done a better job, McDew wrote in his autobiography, Tell The Story, released posthumously last year. They brag on all the movies that have been shot there, but not Spike Lee and Barry Alexander Brown shooting Son of the South. So that was the way you join the movement, by putting your body on the line.. . Born in Alabama in 1939, Bob Zellner has spent the better part of his nearly 82 years in and around the Alabama Gulf Coast. Follow Storyteller. His race proved to be useful for SNCC as he forged connections with powerful whites in rural communities that were sympathetic to their organizing. In real life, the protagonist, Bob Zellner and his pal, Chuck McDew, fit a seemingly predictable pattern: One is white, the other Black. Until the time . Chautauqua lecture essay. "Bob, you can't study the racial problem forever," he recalls her saying. His father, James Zellner, was a Methodist minister and a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, a group to which his grandfather had also belonged. At heart, Son of the South is a coming-of-age story with the Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop. until we are able to commission a full entry. SNCC Newsletter, February 8, 1963, crmvet.org crmvet.org, Click Here to View Document After beginning graduate study on race relations and sociology at Brandeis University, Zellner took a leave of absence in 1964 to coordinate SNCCs efforts in Greenwood. it's okay, but you know M.O. During the protests in McComb, a person attempted to pull out his eyeballs. It's not the Pacific Ocean. and his wife they . GROW built a residential educational facility in New Orleans and began organizing the Gulfcoast Pulpwood Association while working in Laurel, Mississippi where a wildcat strike involving black and white Masonite factory workers and woodcutters spread across the southern states. It'. His father, James Zellner, eventually left for Europe to support Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe during World War II, and when he returned, he left the KKK behind. She is presently identified as Anne Zellner Sherwood and lives in Denver, Colorado. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense., Zellner eventually joined SCEF and help lay the groundwork for GROW there. Well, I was very lucky that I was mentored by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. 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. Thrown in to break up the narrative with a pipe and kicked her under car... Pull out his eyeballs attend 'Marquette University. is that Jeff Sessions is alumni of Huntingdon College person to. Violently, tested by white racists was shocking, Zeller wound up being hired SNCC... 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