How could you not get involved with that? 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. Zellner, Bob Biography: Robert Zellner was born April 5, 1939 in southern Alabama. Right. They were the people that deserved to be followed. So it was a moral necessity and a practical necessity. 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. While a young activist at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, Zellner was initially introduced to the Southern Conference Educational Fund through its longtime leader Anne Braden. 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They were sentenced to four months in jail and fined. 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. During the visit McComb students organized a march to protest the murder of Herbert Lee and the expulsion of Brenda Travis and Ike Lewis from Burglund High School. 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. Foreword by Julian Bond. Roberts grandfather had acquired a lot of wealth through speculation back in the 1920s and the 1930s, but Robert's father never liked the profession. John Robert "Bob" Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 in Jay, Florida. I don't know. The University of Chicago I hope that's the takeaway. Its Zellner whos The Son of the South a white preachers kid from Alabama and the grandson of a Klansman. Did he ever come around? From 1957 to the spring of 1961, he attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, graduating with a BA in Sociology and Psychology. It's not the Pacific Ocean. As the son of an Alabama Klansman, he was attracted to political activism through studying civil rights, meeting Dr. King, and becoming aware of the entrenched racism in his community and in the South. Robert is married to Kathleen Zellner, a well-known attorney known for representing murder convicts Steven Avery and Larry Eyler. 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. 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. 2008. Carrying forward the tradition, Robert was never keen on venturing into speculation. 351 pages. Continuing his life-long habit of returning from time to time for graduate studies, he completed most of the classwork for a Ph.D. in history, Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana between 1991-1994. School of Social Service At 'Fed Atlanta,' Robert got acquainted with a research fellow from 'Duke University' who was pursuing the same doctoral program. Nigger-loving motherf***ing Jew communist queer Goddamn Yankee from New York City, were the words used to describe Bob Zellner as a mob of white people descended upon him with chains, bricks, lead pipes, and baseball bats on October 4, 1961, in McComb, Mississippi. Kathleen had met Robert for the first time in Missouri. Julian Bond, now the National NAACP Chairman and Bob organized the National Civil Rights Coordinating Committee. 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. 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. We had to go to Tuskegee." 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. did bob zellner marry joanne. He's an extremely good actor, and he really gets it. . The examples of Mrs. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer. #cinderella #camilacabello #cinderellamovie Like and subscribe! Down it goes and off you doHate comments will be deleted. 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. Jeanine is a Writer, Actor, member SAG/AFTRA, AEA, Podcast host,. Sometimes when we retell the stories, we actually soft pedal the amount of violence that there was. In 1991 he started a Ph.D. program in History at Tulane . However, he still planned to move to Vietnam. Potomac Books, 2014. 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. There was a reconciliation before the old man died. 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. Bob Zellner was one of their important contacts who would greatly influence this strategy. That brought back a lot of emotion to me. At his first staff meeting, Bob joined the Burglund High School students marching to protest the murder of Herbert Lee. 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. Shortly, Zeller wound up being hired by SNCC to conduct outreach to Southern whites. Request Speaker. A Federal jury, in 2007, agreeing with civil rights attorney Frederick Brewington, ruled that Zellner and the Shinnecock were victims of false arrest, malicious prosecution, and denial of civil rights. And Tuskegee was a great place to shoot. Zellner earned a doctorate in history from Tulane University in the 1990s and until his retirement taught the history of the civil rights movement at Long Island University. 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. He is the son and grandson of Ku Klux Klan members, but has risked his life in the fight to achieve The Second Emancipation. It was at these meetings that Zellner met SNCC members for the first time. * This specific fee falls within this range. That's when they beat me really badly, and almost hanged me that day. He continues his activism and in April 2013 was arrested for protesting North Carolinas voter ID law. Trying to shift the destructive mentality that locked whites into racism instead . Thats part of what impressed McDew, then SNCCs chairman, to hire him. This month he will share the life lessons he learned during the movement with a Pensacola audience. [Revolution in the Air Max Elbaum page 200], Deep South Education and Research Associates, Building Revolution in the South: The Southern Conference Educational Fund and the New Communist Movement, 1968-1981 A Senior Thesis Submitted to The Faculty of the Department of History In Candidacy for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in History, https://keywiki.org/index.php?title=Bob_Zellner&oldid=512831, GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later. By the time we reached the bus station down here, the mob had already really massacred the press. Son of the South is a perfect elixir to soothe the wounds inflicted by the conspiracy theory believing far-right relatives that every liberal white person apparently deals with, back in the middle-American home town they escaped from. Dorothy Zellner reflects on her experience as one of the early organizers in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Learn more about our use of cookies: cookie policy. Son of the South is a biopic is based on The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, the autobiography of civil rights activist Bob Zellner (Lucas Till). 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. He suffered brain damage and post traumatic stress from the physical abuse inflicted upon him. Back then, she wanted to pursue history and then become a professor. Zellner himself became a candidate in 1998 while teaching Civil Rights History at LIU in eastern Long Island. I said, "When are you coming back?" In 1963, he helped integrate the library and lunch counters in the segregated mill town of Danville, Virginia, the last capitol of the Confederacy. Robert Zellner, in a plaid shirt, conducts a GROW workshop with workers in Laurel, Mississippi, undated, Dorothy M. and Robert Zellner Papers, WHS, The rising sentiment in 1965 that whites should organize among whites challenged Zellner. 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. John Robert Zellner (born April 5, 1939) is an American civil rights activist. Bob and his wife Dottie joined SCEF, the Southern Conference Educational Fund to organize an anti-racism project for black . He later moved to Wilson, North Carolina. Updated: Jan 11, 2021 / 12:19 PM CST. I'm sorry, I'm emotional. More than once, Zellner was beaten into unconsciousness. Beginning in the mid-sixties Bob worked on documentary and feature films, traveling to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Until 1962 Zellner was SNCCs only white field secretary. School of Social Service Administration A senior paper.. We're here, we're here in Montgomery. He is a graduate of Denmark High School, Class of 1980. . Bob Zellner. 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). The October League also developed a rural strategy. Julian MacQueen of The Equity Project met Zellner while practicing the Bah Faith in Fairhope, Alabama. Zellner eventually joined SCEF and help lay the groundwork for GROW there. I'm going back to school." It was painful. And dont worry about the savior bit: My bet is that McDews character will steal the show. Bob Zellner, Winter 1963-1964, Danny Lyon, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement 18, dektol.wordpress.com. By Julia Cheng. After two years on the SNCC staff as a field secretary for campus traveling, Bob enrolled to study Sociology as a MA and Ph.D. candidate, Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts between 1963-1965. We brought people together across all kinds of barriers and lines, and now we can do it again to save our democracy. Troopers attacked Dr. Zellner and members of the tribe who were protecting ancestral burial grounds from developer's bulldozers. Providing historical perspective, Bob has been a Guest Lecturer for Common Power. But it means a lot that he put me back in the will. They resulted in a takeover basically, of our government. Administration. We are providing this brief biography for Offering a unique perspective as a white woman in a black-led organization, she sheds light on the dynamics of race and gender in the Civil Rights Movement. 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. Dorothy "Dottie" Miller Zellner is an American human rights activist, feminist, editor, lecturer, and writer. 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