Members of the Planning Committee for the SNCC 50th Anniversary Conference
Shaw University
Raleigh, NC
April 14-18, 2010
Julian Bond, Washington, D.C.
SNCC Communications Director 1961-1966. As a Morehouse student Bond
attended the SNCC founding conference at Shaw in April 1960. Bond
was elected to both houses of the Georgia Legislature, where he
served a total of twenty years. He has been chairman of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since
1998. He is also a professor of history at both the University of
Virginia, and The American University.
Charles Cobb, Jacksonville, FL
Charles E. Cobb JR., is senior analyst for allAfrica.com, the
world's largest electronic provider of news and information from
Africa. He is also a visiting professor at Brown University where he
conducts an undergraduate seminar titled The Organizing Tradition of
the Southern Civil Rights Movement. He was a SNCC field secretary in
Mississippi from 1962-67. Cobb’s latest book is On the Road to
Freedom, a Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail. With civil rights
organizer and educator, Robert P. Moses he co-authored Radical
Equations, Civil Rights From Mississippi to the Algebra Project. He
is also a co-editor of No Easy Victories, American Activists and
African Liberation over a Half Century. A founding member of the
National Association of Black Journalists, Cobb began his journalism
career in 1974 as a reporter for WHUR Radio in Washington, DC. In
1976 he joined the staff of National Public Radio as a foreign
affairs reporter. From 1985-1997 Cobb was a member of the Editorial
Staff of National Geographic magazine. In July 2008, Cobb was
inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of
Fame.
Courtland Cox, Washington, DC
While a Howard University student, Courtland Cox became a member of
NAG and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He
worked with SNCC in Mississippi and Lowndes County, Alabama, was the
Program Secretary for SNCC in 1962, and was the SNCC representative
to the War Crimes Tribunal organized by Bertram Russell. In 1963 he
served as the SNCC representative on the Steering Committee for the
March on Washington. In 1973 Mr. Cox served as the Secretary General
of the Sixth Pan-African Congress and international meeting of
African people in Tanzania. He co-owned and managed the Drum and
Spear bookstore and Drum and Spear Press. Cox is presently a
Consultant with the D.C. Public Schools. Cox was appointed by
President Clinton to serve as the Director of the Minority Business
Development Agency (MBDA) at the Department of Commerce, a position
he held until January 20, 2001.
Connie Curry, Atlanta, GA
Constance Curry is a writer, activist, and a fellow at the Institute
for Women's Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. She is the
author of several books, including Silver Rights, which tells the
true story of Mrs. Mae Bertha Carter and her family's struggle for
education in Sunflower County, Mississippi; and Mississippi Harmony
with Ms. Winson Hudson, which tells the life story of Mrs. Winson a
civil rights leader from Leake County, Miss., who also challenged
segregation in the 1960s. Curry also collaborated in and edited Deep
in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement (University
of Georgia Press, 2000) and the book Aaron Henry: the Fire Ever
Burning (University Press of Mississippi, 2000). Curry attended the
April 1960 Shaw Conference representing the National Student
Association.
David C. Forbes, Sr, Raleigh, NC
Rev. Forbes is Pastor of Christian Faith Baptist Church in Raleigh.
He is a Member of the Shaw University Board of Trustees. Rev. Forbes
attended the April 1960 founding conference at Shaw while a student
at Shaw.
Don Harris, Osprey, FL
Retired business executive. Born and raised in New York City. While
attending Rutgers University, went on Operation Crossroads Africa
and was active in the Northern Student Movement. Joined the movement
in the south with SNCC in Southwest Georgia in June, 1962. Worked in
Albany, Leesburg and was present at the inception and during the
growth of the Sumpter County movement. Eventually jailed in Americus
on charge of insurrection. Managed C.B. King's campaign for Congress
(2nd dist., Georgia) in 1964. Traveled to Guinea West Africa with
SNCC delegation and, subsequently, with John Lewis to Zambia's
independence ceremonies in Lusaka in 1964.
Tim Jenkins, Washington, DC
Jenkins was student body president at Howard University when the
sit-in movement erupted in 1960. That same year he was elected
National Affairs VP of the National Student Association before
entering Yale Law School. During this period he was SNCC lobbyist on
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a member of the executive
committee of the Students For Democratic Society. Among other duties
he has taught at Howard University Law School, the Johns Hopkins
School for Advanced Studies and the David A. Clarke School of Law.
He co-founded The National Conference of Black Lawyers, was
appointed Governor of the United States Postal Service, President of
The University of the District of Columbia and is now Chairman of
Unlimited Visions, Inc. He is coauthor of Blacks In The Information
Age.
Charles Jones, Charlotte, NC
Attorney. In 1961 Jones was put in charge of SNCC’s voter
registration efforts.
He served as chair of SNCC's direct action committee. He was one of
the Rock Hill, South Carolina Four. After riding from Atlanta,
Georgia to Birimingham, Alabama on a Greyhound bus on May 24 and 25,
1961, he was arrested as a Freedom Rider in Montgomery, Alabama.
While working with Charles Sherrod, Cordell Reagon, and the Albany
Movement members, he went to jail on two occasions with Dr. King.
Sharlene Kranz, Washington, DC
Retired Legislative Counsel. While in high school she was a member
of NAG, and later worked in MFDP and DC SNCC Offices, in the New
York SNCC Office, and at the MFDP Challenge in Atlantic City in
1964. Kranz has worked on Capitol Hill for two Members of Congress,
for the National Welfare Rights Organization, for the DC Coalition
Against Domestic Violence, and for the Council of the District of
Columbia. She is a graduate of an HBCU law school: The University of
the District of Columbia.
Dorie Ladner, Washington, DC
Retired social worker. Born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi,
Ladner first became involved with the Civil Rights Movement when she
and her sister and fellow activist, Joyce Ladner, joined the
Hattiesburg NAACP Youth Council in 1958. She was the SNCC project
director in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1964 until 1966, and lectured
at universities, churches and other institutions to raise money for
the organization. In addition, Ladner was also a supporter of the
Anti-Vietnam War Movement and worked in the presidential campaigns
of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. She went on to serve as a
community organizer for the Anti Poverty Program in St. Louis, and
was an advocate for civil rights in housing and employment. Ladner
has also worked for the Martin Luther King Library Documentation
Center to help collect the history of people who were participants
in the Civil Rights Movement.
Joyce Ladner, Sarasota, FL
A highly respected sociologist, Dr. Ladner grew up in Hattiesburg,
Mississippi during the era of racial segregation. During her years
of activism in the early sixties, she worked with civil rights
martyrs Medgar Evers, Vernon Dahmer, Clyde Kennard and two of the
three civil rights workers who were murdered in 1964, James Chaney
and Mickey Schwerner. Even though she was in college, she failed the
voter registration literacy test and did not get registered until a
federal court order was granted. Dr. Ladner received her B.A. degree
from Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi and while there, she
was arrested for trying to worship at the all-white Galloway
Methodist Church. She spent a week in jail. She continued her
education and received her PhD in sociology at Washington
University. She was the first woman president of Howard University
from 1994 to 1995, where she also served as professor of sociology
from 1981 to 1998. She has received numerous awards including the
Distinguished Alumni Award from Washington University, St. Louis,
and honorary doctorates from Howard University and Tougaloo College.
She was a senior fellow in at The Brookings Institution, a think
tank in Washington, D.C. until her retirement in 2003. She was also
a member of the United States Department of Justice's Advisory
Council on Violence Against Women and the Council on Foreign
Relations, as well as Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. When the city of
Washington, DC went broke in 1995, President Bill Clinton appointed
her to the five member District of Columbia Financial Control Board
(1995-98) whose job was to balance the city‘s budget. Dr. Ladner has
authored, co-authored and edited eight books.
Chuck McDew, Chair of the Planning
Committee, W. St. Paul, MN
Retired history professor. Charles McDew led his first demonstration
in the eighth grade, to protest violations of the religious freedom
of Amish students in his hometown of Massillon, Ohio. McDew’s career
as an activist expanded in scope while he was a freshman at South
Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Inevitably
involved in the newborn sit-in movement, he was elected as student
leader by his fellow demonstrators. McDew attended the founding
conference at Shaw in April 1960 while a student at South Carolina
State and a member of The Orangeburg Movement for Civil Improvement.
He served as the second Chairman of SNCC, 1960-1963. McDew has been
active in organizations for social and political change, working as
a teacher and as a labor organizer, managing anti-poverty programs
in Washington, D.C., serving as community organizer and catalyst for
change in Boston and San Francisco, as well as other communities. He
has appeared on countless radio and television programs as a speaker
against racism. McDew recently retired from Metropolitan State
University, Minneapolis, MN, where his classes in the history of the
civil rights movement, African-American history, and in social and
cultural awareness were always oversubscribed
Charles Payne, Chicago, IL
Charles M. Payne is the Frank P. Hixon Professor in the School of
Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, where he
is also an affiliate of the Center for Urban School Improvement. His
interests include urban education and school reform, social
inequality, social change and modern African American history. He is
the author of I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing
Tradition in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (1995), and an
anthology, Teach Freedom: The African American Tradition of
Education For Liberation (Teachers College Press), which is
concerned with Freedom School-like education. Dr. Payne was founding
director of the Urban Education Project in Orange, New Jersey, a
nonprofit community center that broadens educational experiences for
urban youngsters. He has taught at Southern University, Williams
College, Northwestern University and Duke University.
Larry Rubin, Takoma Park, MD.
President, Voorhees College, an HBCU in Denmark, SC. Formerly, Dr.
Sellers had been the Director of the African American Studies
Program at the University of South Carolina. During college at
Howard University he was a member of NAG and was the director of the
Holly Springs COFO office during Mississippi Freedom Summer. In 1965
he became the program director of SNCC. He was one of the first
members of SNCC to refuse to be drafted into the U.S. military as a
protest against the Vietnam War. Sellers served seven months in
prison after a conviction for inciting to riot in Orangeburg, SC.
During his imprisonment he wrote his autobiography, The River of No
Return, chronicling his involvement with the civil rights movement.
Sellers received a full pardon 25 years after his conviction.
Charles M. Sherrod, Albany, GA
History professor, Albany State University. Attended April 1960
founding conference at Shaw while a student at the Virginia Union
School of Religion. He was SNCC’s first field secretary. From 1961
to 1967 was SNCC field secretary in Albany, Georgia; also directed
the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education (1961-87) and
New Communities, Inc., a cooperative farming project, from 1969 to
1985. Served on Albany City Commission from 1976 to 1990; former
chaplain at Georgia State Prison, Homerville, Georgia.
Karen Spellman, Washington, DC
Karen Spellman is a special events producer who formed her company
in 1984 specializing in large-scaled cultural and social justice
programs. She is a graduate of Howard University and received her
master’s in city planning from Georgia Tech. Her work in the civil
rights movement began as a high school student in the Greensboro, NC
NAACP youth chapter where she participated in sit-ins for public
accommodations. In 1963, she began her work with SNCC as a Howard
University student organizer working with the Nonviolent Action
Group (NAG) and the DC SNCC office. In 1966 she became a full time
SNCC worker in Atlanta, Georgia as the SNCC Research Director at the
national office, and provided materials and publications for the
SNCC Newsletter, created “The Panther’s Claw” newsletter for the
Lowndes County Freedom Organization and produced the Aframerican
News Service that provided feature articles documenting the work of
SNCC to the national black press.
Maria Varela, Albuquerque, NM
Organizer and Visiting Professor. As a SNCC staff member from
1962-1967 in Alabama and Mississippi, Varela developed educational
materials for SNCC and CORE organizers as well as poetry and
children’s books under Flute Publications. Also a SNCC photographer,
Varela’s photos have been featured in several exhibits including at
the NY Public Library, the Smithsonian, Smith College, the Eastman
House and the Howard Greenberg Gallery. Maria moved to NM in 1967.
For the last 32 years she has organized rural non profits involved
in economic and environmental justice. Awarded a National Rural
Fellowship in 1980, she acquired a Masters in Community and Regional
Planning from the University of Massachusetts (1982). In 1990, she
was awarded a Macarthur Foundation fellowship for her work in
community development work in the Southwest. From 1982 to present,
in addition to her community organizing work, Varela has held
adjunct professor positions at the University of New Mexico and The
Colorado College. Maria and her husband Lorenzo Zuniga have a
daughter Sabina Zuniga-Varela.
Hollis Watkins, Jackson, MS
Hollis Watkins is the Co-founder and President of Southern Echo,
Inc., a leadership development, education, training, and technical
assistance organization dedicated to empowering local residents
throughout Mississippi and the Southern region to make political,
economic, educational, and environmental systems accountable to the
needs and interests of the African-American community. The twelfth
child born to sharecroppers in Lincoln County, Mississippi, he was
nineteen when he became the first Mississippi student to join the
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as a voting rights
organizer. Later he served as the director of the Organic and
Sustainable Agriculture Program of the Mississippi Association of
Cooperatives before founding Southern Echo in 1990.
Bob Zellner, Southampton, NY
The son and grandson of Alabama Klansmen, Zellner became a SNCC
field secretary in 1961. He worked for SNCC in McComb, Miss.,
Albany, Ga., Danville, Va., Talladega, Montgomery, and Birmingham,
Ala. He is the author of the memoir The Wrong Side of Murder Creek:
A white southerner in the freedom movement (2009).