Summer 2023 Part 3

 

The Legacy of W.E.B. DuBois

 

Genius is a word that accurately describes his longevity. For almost one century of living a dynamic life, W.E.B. DuBois fought for racial and economic justice, collaborated with fellow icons (like Ida B. Wells, Trotter, and Paul Robeson), and advanced the advocacy of the unity of people of black African descent sincerely. His revolutionary fervor for real social change dramatically increased as he has gotten older as a black human being. His contributions and intellectual insights into sociological research (from studying the black lives of the city of Philadelphia to recording to history of the Reconstruction era accurately) has been extraordinary. DuBois presented to the world non-stereotypical portraits of black American life in many spaces from a Chicago Fair to the NAACP's Crisis magazine. No human is perfect, and we know fully of DuBois' errors (i.e. his promotion of the Talented Tenth concept). Yet, W.E.B. DuBois is 100 percent right on tons of issues like being anti-imperialist, for being in favor of voting rights, for exposing the contradictions and weaknesses of capitalism, and desiring black liberation in the Motherland of Africa including worldwide. He not only studied history, philosophy, economics, and sociology in Berlin, in Massachusetts, in Atlanta, in Nashville, and in Washington, D.C. W.E.B. DuBois was an active participant in expressing heroic opposition to racism, discrimination, lynching, economic oppression, and colonialism. DuBois loved Africa so much that he lived in Accra, Ghana where he transitioned at the age of 95 years old (with then intention to write an encyclopedia about Africa and black culture in general). DuBois was praised by tons of people from Dr. King, Cornell West, and other human beings. Now, W.E.B. DuBois's legacy and wisdom will continue to embolden our minds in fighting for the Dream to be made real for our generation including future, subsequent generations as well. 

Growing Up

To understand W.E.B. DuBois's life, you have to look at his life chronologically. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, at Great Barrington, Massachusetts to Alfred and Mary Silvinia (nee Burghardt) Du Bois. Alfred left Mary in 1870, two years after their son William was born. Mary Du Bois moved with her son back to her parents' house in Great Barrington, and they lived there until he was five. She worked to support her family (receiving some assistance from her brother and neighbors), until she suffered a stroke in the early 1880s. DuBois's mother passed away in 1885 at Massachusetts. DuBois worked hard in his life and neighbors donated him money, so her would attend Fisk University from 1885 to 1888. Fisk University is a famous historically black college and university found at Nashville, Tennessee. He earned a bachelor's degree from Fisk. He attended Harvard University (in Massachusetts) from 1888 to 1890 where he was strongly influenced by his professor William James, who was a prominent scholar in American philosophy. By the 1890's, Philadelphia's black neighborhood were negatively stereotyped as field with crime, poverty, and mortality. Du Bois wrote a book that refuted the negative stereotypes with empirical evidence and shaped his approach to segregation and its negative impact on black lives and reputations. The results led Du Bois to believe in his mind that racial integration was the key to democratic equality in American cities. In 1891, Du Bois received a scholarship to attend the sociology graduate school at Harvard. In 1892, Du Bois received a fellowship from the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen to attend the University of Berlin for graduate work.

His Education

By the summer of 1894, Du Bois had many job offers, including one from the great Tuskegee Institute. He decided to accept a teaching job at Wilberforce University in Ohio. He was influenced heavily by Alexander Crummel at Wilberforce University. Crummell believed that ideas and morals are necessary tools to effect social change. After returning from Europe, Du Bois completed his graduate studies; in 1895 he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

While at Wilberforce, Du Bois married Nina Gomer, one of his students, on May 12, 1896. After two years at Wilberforce, Du Bois accepted a one-year research job from the University of Pennsylvania as an "assistant in sociology" in the summer of 1896. While taking part in the American Negro Academy (ANA) in 1897, Du Bois presented a paper in which he rejected Frederick Douglass's plea for black Americans to integrate into white society. He wrote: "we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland." By July of 1897, Du Bois moved from Philadelphia to live in Atlanta, Georgia. He took a professorship in history and economics at the historically black Atlanta University. In the August 1897 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Du Bois published "Strivings of the Negro People," his first work aimed at the general public, in which he enlarged upon his thesis that African Americans should embrace their African heritage while contributing to American society. Sam Hose was lynched near Atlanta in 1899. After that, everything changed for DuBois. Hose was tortured, burned, and hung by a mob of 2,000 racist white people. DuBois was inspired to fight for greater activism in his life. When walking through Atlanta to discuss the lynching with newspaper editor Joel Chandler Harris, Du Bois encountered Hose's burned knuckles in a storefront display. The episode stunned Du Bois, and he resolved that "one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved." Du Bois realized that "the cure wasn't simply telling people the truth, it was inducing them to act on the truth." 

W.E.B. DuBois always wanted to fight against stereotypes against African Americans. That is why he was the primary organizer of The Exhibit of American Negroes at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris between April and November 1900, for which he put together a series of 363 photographs aiming to commemorate the lives of African Americans at the turn of the century and challenge the racist caricatures and stereotypes of the day. W.E.B. DuBois was a long proponent of Pan-Africanism, so he attended the First Pan-African Conference, held in London from July 23 to 25, 1900. By the 1900's, he was one of the most famous black leaders in America along with Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, etc. In 1901, Du Bois wrote a review critical of Washington's autobiography Up from Slavery. The irony is that DuBois and Washington were cordial in their disagreements. Both men were right on many issues and wrong on other issues. For example, Booker T. Washington was right to promote industry, agriculture, and the building of institutions in the black community. He was inaccurate in some of his immigration and pro-capitalist views. DuBois was right to fight for social and political including economic justice. He was right to oppose imperialism. He was wrong to promote his Talented Tenth precept (as power in the black community shouldn't be concentrated into 10 percent of the community. Power should be equitable distributed). In an effort to portray the genius and humanity of the black race, Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of 14 essays. The Soul of Black Folks wrote that black Americans have both the African and American consciousness, and we are trying to reconcile the two. In 1905, Du Bois and several other African American civil rights activists – including Fredrick L. McGhee, Jesse Max Barber and William Monroe Trotter – met in Canada, near Niagara Falls. There they wrote a declaration of principles opposing the Atlanta Compromise and incorporated as the Niagara Movement in 1906. The Niagara Movement started the birth or the creation of the NAACP.

The Nadir of Race Relations

Du Bois and the other "Niagarites" wanted to publicize their ideals to other African Americans, but most black periodicals were owned by publishers sympathetic to Washington. Du Bois bought a printing press and started publishing Moon Illustrated Weekly in December 1905. The Niagarites held a second conference in August 1906, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown's birth, at the West Virginia site of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. President Teddy Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 black soldiers because they were accused of crimes as a result of the Brownsville Affair. Many of the discharged soldiers had served for 20 years and were near retirement. Even Booker T. Washington wanted the black soldiers to not be in prison. This inspired Washington to fight for voting rights for black Americans just before his passing. In September, riots broke out in Atlanta, precipitated by unfounded allegations of black men assaulting white women. This was a catalyst for racial tensions based on a job shortage and employers playing black workers against white workers. Ten thousand whites rampaged through Atlanta, beating every black person they could find, resulting in over 25 deaths. This was on Saturday, September 22, 1906.

In the aftermath of the 1906 violence, Du Bois urged black human beings to withdraw their support from the Republican Party, because Republicans Roosevelt and William Howard Taft did not sufficiently support black people. Most African Americans had been loyal to the Republican Party since the time of Abraham Lincoln. Du Bois soon founded and edited another vehicle for his polemics, The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line, which debuted in 1907. Freeman H. M. Murray and Lafayette M. Hershaw served as The Horizon's co-editors. In May 1909, Du Bois attended the National Negro Conference in New York. The meeting led to the creation of the National Negro Committee, chaired by Oswald Villard, and dedicated to campaigning for civil rights, equal voting rights, and equal educational opportunities. Du Bois was the first African American invited by the American Historical Association (AHA) to present a paper at their annual conference. He read his paper, Reconstruction and Its Benefits, to an astounded audience at the AHA's December 1909 conference. NAACP leaders offered Du Bois the position of Director of Publicity and Research. He accepted the job in the summer of 1910, and moved to New York after resigning from Atlanta University. DuBois edited The Crisis in 1910. This was the NAACP's monthly magazine. Its first issue appeared in November of 1910 and DuBois wanted to expose the dangers of race prejudice. In 1911 Du Bois attended the First Universal Races Congress in London and he published his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece. DuBois, Trotter, and other activists were leaders in fighting to ban and boycott the racist film of The Birth of a Nation in 1915 (which is possibly the most racist film in all of human history. It was a silent film that showed black people as brutish, unintelligent, and lustful of trying to rape white women). During the years 1915 and 1916, some leaders of the NAACP – disturbed by financial losses at The Crisis, and worried about the inflammatory rhetoric of some of its essays – attempted to oust Du Bois from his editorial position. Du Bois and his supporters prevailed, and he continued in his role as editor.

By 1916, there was the Waco Horror article. It was about the lynching of a mentally impaired 17-year-old African American teenager named Jesse Washington. This article exposed the conduct of local racist whites in Waco, Texas using undercover reporting. W.E.B. DuBois wanted black Americans to fight in WWI, so democracy can be made in America. His colleague, NAACP member Joel Spingarn formed a camp to train African Americans to serve as officers in the United States military. Obviously, after WWI, democracy was not given to black Americans completely at all. By July of 1917, there was the East St. Louis, Illinois riots. Du Bois traveled to St. Louis to report on the riots. Between 40 and 250 African Americans were massacred by whites, primarily due to resentment caused by St. Louis industry hiring black people to replace striking white workers. People protested this racist pogrom against black people.  To publicly demonstrate the black community's outrage over the riots, Du Bois organized the Silent Parade, a march of around 9,000 African Americans down New York City's Fifth Avenue, the first parade of its kind in New York, and the second instance of blacks publicly demonstrating for civil rights. There was the Houston riot of 1917. It started when Houston police officers arrested and beat 2 black soldiers. In response, over 100 black soldiers took to the streets in Houston and acted in self-defense. 16 white people died. A military court martial was held, and 19 of the soldiers were hung, and 67 others were imprisoned. In spite of the Houston riot, Du Bois and others successfully pressed the Army to accept the officers trained at Spingarn's camp, resulting in over 600 black officers joining the Army in October 1917. When the war ended, Du Bois traveled to Europe in 1919 to attend the first Pan-African Congress (on Wednesday, February 19, 1919, at Paris, France) and to interview African American soldiers for a planned book on their experiences in World War I. Red Summer took place in 1919. This was about massive attacks on black Americans nationwide by white racists. This came after the start of the First Migration when African Americans wanted job and economic opportunities in the North.  In a 1919 column titled "The True Brownies", he announced the creation of The Brownies' Book, the first magazine published for African-American children and youth, which he founded with Augustus Granville Dill and Jessie Redmon Fauset.

His work in the NAACP

DuBois documented the atrocities against black people in The Crisis. Infuriated with the distortions, Du Bois published a letter in the New York World, claiming that the only crime the black sharecroppers had committed was daring to challenge their white landlords by hiring an attorney to investigate contractual irregularities. He wrote the first of his three autobiographies in 1920 called Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. Du Bois traveled to Europe in August 1921 to attend the second Pan-African Congress. The assembled black leaders from around the world issued the London Resolutions and established a Pan-African Association headquarters in Paris. Under Du Bois's guidance, the resolutions insisted on racial equality, and that Africa be ruled by Africans (not, as in the 1919 congress, with the consent of Africans). The Crisis was the preeminent periodical of the civil rights movement back then, but its circulation declines to 60,000 in 1923 from 100,000 during the height of WWI. In 1923, President Coolidge (at Chicago) designated Du Bois an "Envoy Extraordinary" to Liberia and – after the third congress concluded – Du Bois rode a German freighter from the Canary Islands to Africa, visiting Liberia, Sierra Leone and Senegal. W.E.B. DuBois visited the Soviet Union by 1926. Back then, DuBois believed in socialism but disagreed with Stalin's totalitarianism. By 1931, there was a rivalry emerged in 1931 between the NAACP and the Communist Party, when the Communists responded quickly and effectively to support the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American youth arrested in 1931 in Alabama for rape.

Du Bois did not have a good working relationship with Walter Francis White, president of the NAACP since 1931. That conflict, combined with the financial stresses of the Great Depression, precipitated a power struggle over The Crisis. Du Bois, concerned that his position as editor would be eliminated, resigned his job at The Crisis and accepted an academic position at Atlanta University in early 1933. W.E.B. DuBois published his magnum opus called Black Reconstruction in America in 1935. It was the study of Reconstruction. He once presented a paper on it to the American Historical Association in 1910. He proposed a proposed encyclopedia on black history by 1938. His 2nd autobiography was published in 1940 called Dusk of Dawn. In 1943, at the age of 76, Du Bois was abruptly fired from his position at Atlanta University by college president Rufus Clement. Turning down job offers from Fisk and Howard, Du Bois re-joined the NAACP as director of the Department of Special Research. Surprising many NAACP leaders, Du Bois jumped into the job with vigor and determination. This was in 1943. W.E.B. DuBois opposed the Axis Powers during WWII. On Wednesday, April 25, 1945, Du Bois was a member of the three-person delegation from the NAACP that attended the 1945 conference in San Francisco at which the United Nations was established. By 1945, at Manchester, UK, Du Bois attended the fifth and final, Pan-African Congress. When the Cold War commenced in the mid-1940s, the NAACP distanced itself from Communists, lest its funding or reputation suffer. The NAACP redoubled their efforts in 1947 after Life magazine published a piece by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. claiming that the NAACP was heavily influenced by Communists. The NAACP leadership wanted DuBois to not have friendship with Communist revolutionaries like Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, and Shirley Graham (his future second wife). DuBois refused this as these were his friends. DuBois wrote that, "I am not a communist ... On the other hand, I ... believe ... that Karl Marx ... put his finger squarely upon our difficulties ..."

Revolutionary Views

The FBI by this time illegally monitored W.E.B. DuBois. He resigned from the NAACP for the second time in late 1948. In 1949, Du Bois spoke at the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace in New York: "I tell you, people of America, the dark world is on the move! It wants and will have Freedom, Autonomy and Equality. It will not be diverted in these fundamental rights by dialectical splitting of political hairs ... Whites may, if they will, arm themselves for suicide. But the vast majority of the world's peoples will march on over them to freedom!" Nina Gomer died in 1950. In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. Senator from New York on the American Labor Party ticket and received about 200,000 votes, or 4% of the statewide total. He married Shirley Graham in 1952. The U.S. government prevented Du Bois from attending the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. This was on Monday, April 18, 1955. The Bandung Conference was about people of color (from Africa to Asia) desiring independence from the Soviet Communists and from America in dealing with their nationalist movements. Nkrumah invited Du Bois to Ghana to participate in their independence celebration in 1957, but he was unable to attend because the U.S. government had confiscated his passport in 1951. In 1958, Du Bois regained his passport, and with his second wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, he traveled around the world, visiting Russia and China. In both countries he was celebrated. Du Bois later wrote approvingly of the conditions in both countries.

The Latter Years of His Life

By 1960 – the "Year of Africa" – Du Bois had recovered his passport and was able to cross the Atlantic and celebrate the creation of the Republic of Ghana. In October 1961, at the age of 93, Du Bois and his wife traveled to Ghana to take up residence. Du Bois joined the Communist Party in October 1961, at the age of 93. Around that time, he wrote: "I believe in Communism. I mean by Communism, a planned way of life in the production of wealth and work designed for building a state whose object is the highest welfare of its people and not merely the profit of a part." In early 1963, the United States refused to renew his passport, so he made the symbolic gesture of becoming a citizen of Ghana. Du Bois's health declined during the two years he was in Ghana, and he died on August 27, 1963, in the capital of Accra at the age of 95 (on August 27, 1963). This came one day before the March on Washington on Wednesday August 28, 1963. During the march, NAACP speaker Roy Wilkins asked the thousands of marchers to honor W.E.B. DuBois with a moment of silence. DuBois planned on making a large Encyclopedia about our people in Africa. Du Bois was given a state funeral on August 29–30, 1963, at Nkrumah's request, and buried beside the western wall of Christiansborg Castle (now Osu Castle), then the seat of government in Accra. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had many of the proposals that DuBois promoted throughout his life. In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech where he praised W.E.B. DuBois for promoting progressive views, and DuBois wrote about Dr. King too when he was alive. W.E.B. DuBois was one of the greatest intellectual giants among the black community, and his influence inspire us to this very day as we reach the quarter century mark of the 21st century indeed. 

W.E.B. DuBois's Legacy

W.E.B. DuBois's legacy is very extensive. He was born in the North in the state of Massachusetts. From an early age, he has grown in his intellectual analysis of black people. He contributed a great deal to sociology with his understanding of Philadelphia, the era of Reconstruction, and other situations. DuBois wanted to refute the pernicious myth that black people were inferior or didn't make magnificent, complex contributions in history. He also lived in a nadir of race relations when black men, black women, and black children were lynched, raped, oppressed, murdered, and suffered pogroms at the hands of white racist terrorists. He studied at the HBCU of Fisk University, Harvard, and overseas in Europe to gather how the world really worked. Opposing nuclear disarmament was part of his life too (Coretta Scott King, Dr. King, the Black Panther Party, Zora Neale Hurston, Marian Anderson, Bayard Rustin, Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, etc. wanted nuclear disarmament too). W.E.B. DuBois (and Ida B. Wells) gave life and vigor to the NAACP. He became more revolutionary than the leadership of the NAACP by the 1950's.  He fundamentally criticized capitalism, because he believed that it was a system of exploitation, unfairness, and inequality. DuBois was a leader of the Pan-African movement that wanted a political, economic, and social linkage among all people of black African descent worldwide. That is why he lived in Accra, Ghana before he passed away at the age of 93 years old. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired by W.E.B. DuBois' words in a speech that he gave at Carnegie Hall before 1968. DuBois knew about Dr. King too and wrote about him (both exchanged letters of support in 1956 in favor of the Montgomery Bus Boycott). Therefore, we are inspired by the life of W.E.B. DuBois to discover truth plus advocate for justice and believe in real principles to liberate human beings from oppression.

Rest in Power Brother W.E.B. DuBois. 

Gloria Richardson

 

One of the most unsung civil rights activists in the world was the pioneer, Gloria Richardson. She lived to be 99 years old, and her legacy is set on a firm foundation of the ancestors who risked their lives for our liberation. Gloria Richardson was a human being that I knew for years. For years, she lived in the Eastern Shore of Maryland area before, where many of my distant cousins live at. I have been to the region before as well. Gloria Richardson was the leader of the Cambridge movement, which was about civil rights advocating human beings seeking to liberate Cambridge, Maryland from oppression during the early 1960's. It was a major era of civil rights when black people used legitimate self-defense against white racist terrorists in Cambridge, Maryland. Later, Gloria Richardson was one of the signatories to "The Treaty of Cambridge," signed in July 1963 with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and state and local officials. It was an effort at reconciliation and commitment to change after a riot the month before. She was restricted to speak at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That was egregiously wrong. Later, she moved to New York City to help civil rights and economic development in Harlem locally. Gloria Richardson (who was praised by Malcolm X, who was her friend), like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, promoted the image of black women as being active warriors for racial justice. They spoke their minds, didn't back down from evil, and inspired future generations to dream plus act in a positive direction. She lived in New York City by the time of her transition on July 15, 2021. Her sacrifice, courage, and intellect will always be remembered by us. 

Her Youth

Gloria Richardson was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 6, 1922. Her parents were John and Mable (nee St. Clair) Hayes. Her mother was part of the affluent St. Clair family of Cambridge, Maryland. Her mother's family owned and operated a successful grocery store and funeral home. Her ancestors were free people of color since before the Civil War. Her maternal family owned many extensive rental properties. By the time of the Great Depression in America, the Hayes family moved to Cambridge, Maryland where Mable grew up. One of Mable's uncles was a lawyer in the state of Maryland. Richardson's family were involved in politics constantly. Gloria's wealthy maternal St. Clair grandfather was elected to the Cambridge City Council, serving from 1912 to 1946. Growing up, Gloria Richardson had a powerful personality that was promoted by her parents and maternal grandparents. Richardson, early on, wanted to promote community and supported human rights. She abhorred racism. She attended a neighborhood public school. Her parents desired her to speak up and to be comfortable in front a large group of people. That is why she performed at Sunday school programs. Her persistence and independence were done by her as supported by her parents. In other words, she rejected the respectability politics promoted by some people found in wealthier families. She was taught by her grandparents to value people for their actions, not for their socioeconomic status. She knew that her family privileges, her college degree, and her family's social position couldn't alone eliminate racism in Cambridge. The Hayes family was educated and relatively affluent, but still had suffered racial injustice. Sadly, Gloria's father John Hayes died of a heart attack due to the lack of nearby medical care accessible to black people. It forced the then young woman Gloria Richardson to realize that racism was a matter of life and death. 

In the state of Maryland, black men were allowed to vote since Emancipation after the American Civil War. Women were allowed to vote (among every color) with the 19th Constitutional Amendment since 1920. Racism still existed in the city of Baltimore against African Americans. Many African Americans were segregated into housing one of the five wards, or the Second Ward. In that ward, black people built up substantial religious and business communities. They still lived under Maryland state Jim Crow apartheid laws and customs in the city at large. Richardson earned her B.A. in sociology in 1942 from Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, DC. She became involved in social activism as a student protesting with others at the Peoples Drug store near campus because the store refused to hire Black workers. In college, she also picketed a segregated Woolworth's store in the capital, where black human beings were not allowed to have lunch at the in-store counter. People were surprised by her leadership and her status as a woman from an elite African American family. They were used to dealing with poor black women who many people falsely thought were all less outspoken. The truth is that black people, regardless of socioeconomic wealth, have always been outspoken against injustice throughout human history. Richardson learned a lot during that time. She realized that even 50 years of Black participation in the legal system had limited results. She could see that Cambridge was still highly segregated and learned that Black Americans suffered one of the highest unemployment rates for that size city. 

Growing Activism

Glorida Richardson returned to Cambridge, Maryland after college. She married Harry Richardson and started to fight for civil rights. When the city government hired black people as social workers, they were to serve only black clients in the all-black ward. After she was passed over for a social worker position in the "black" ward, she decided to focus on her family and civic work. In an interview with Robert Penn Warren for his book Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965), Richardson said that in Cambridge, blacks were "the last hired and first fired," a phrase applicable to minorities in other places as well.

When she divorced from Harry Richardson, she was a mother with two daughters. She worked at a pharmacy and grocery store owned by her family in a predominantly Black community. Richardson has said that her motherhood sparked her activist role. Gloria Richardson had a formal office in the Cambridge Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (CNCC). She was the adult adviser to the CNCC. During one time, she was the only black woman to head a local civil rights agency. When she became co-chair of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), she began to identify goals beyond desegregation. She sought economic and social justice in housing, education, job opportunity, and health care. While co-chairing CNAC, Richardson gained insight into who to trust in the process of negotiating the expansion of rights of the Black community in Cambridge. Gloria Richardson was arrested three times during her early activism movement. She was first arrested, and Judge W. Laird lied and said that her tactics disgrace her family name. He wanted to shame her into silence. That didn't work. She continued to fight back harder. She was known for using verbal responses. She called national leaders as presenting "meaningless smiles" due to their failure to gain substantial change. 

The Movement for Justice in Cambridge, Maryland

By December 1961, the Cambridge movement grows. During that time, SNCC or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sent Reginald Robinson and William Hansen to Cambridge to organize civil rights actions. SNCC had been contacted by activists in the city. The 2 young men started sit-ins in February to protest segregated facilities. They targeted movie theaters, bowling alleys, and restaurants. Donna Richardson, Gloria Richardson's daughter, was among students who supported the demonstrators. Richardson and Yolanda Sinclair, a mother of another protester, were among parents who wanted to show their support for these actions. In 1961, a Freedom Ride came to Cambridge, Maryland. The black city council member had attempted to discourage the campaign by insisting that the city was already desegregated. At first Richardson rarely participated in civil disobedience, because she could not accept the original SNCC nonviolence rules.

By 1962, the Civil Rights movement was picking up steam around the country. Students attempted to desegregate public facilities in Cambridge. At the time, the city had a population of around 11,000, of whom about one-third were Black Americans. The initial protests, including picketing and sit-ins, were peaceful. Although, white supremacists attacked demonstrators, police arrested the protestors. The protests did not yield results until Richardson was chosen to lead the movement and CNAC. By January 13, 1962, the city's black community held its first civil rights demonstration of the 1960's. Dozens of black high school students, including Richardson's daughter Donna, joined a number of young men and women from Baltimore's Civic Interest Group (CIG) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and two members of SNCC. They planned for weeks among the black young people of Cambridge. The Cambridge civil rights movement started into a new era.  Initially, when Richardson wanted to get involved with the protests, her daughter Donna sent Richardson home until Richardson could guarantee that she would demonstrate nonviolently, as the other individuals had been trained to do. It was a commitment Richardson could not make at the time; therefore, she focused on working with the Black community’s secretive and highly efficient intelligence-sharing network, known as the “grapevine."  Richardson provided information to CIG and SNCC about how Cambridge’s political system operated and the opinions of the Black community. Her daughter acted as a spark in Richardson’s activist journey. Through witnessing various demonstrations in support of her daughter’s activism, Richardson struggled to remain silent in the face of counter-protestors that mocked the non-violent Civil Rights groups.

Gloria Richardson wanted to be active in social justice issues. She ran her family's business. Later, she decided to be a student again. She attended workshops and special sessions. This was when activists trained methodically for nonviolence, to withstand the hatred of mobs, etc. These mobs would use slurs and demeaning acts to prevent peaceful assembly among protesters. These protests against injustice ought to be protected by the Constitution. The March and April 1962 demonstrations resulted in a large caseload for the local court system where Richardson and other defendants were tried together. Gloria Richardson was one of more than 50 people who stood trial for charges of disorderly conduct. This became known as The Penny Trial and demonstrated how the Cambridge movement disrupted white elites’ racial comfort zones. On the issue of violence, Richardson had the outlook that violence is not necessarily the answer, but she does not condemn violence as she believes it is a residue of frustration. She once said that “revolts seemed to be the only thing that America understands, and the nation’s racial problems made revolts unavoidable." The Cambridge movement was one of the first campaigns to focus on economic rights not just on civil rights in the 1960's. Richardson would be one of the first leaders to question publicly about nonviolence as a tactic. There was a changing movement. Protests wanted both economic and social equality. Richardson wanted to end discrimination and inequity in employment, poor wages, struggling schools, health care issues, and segregated facilities. Richardson said in a later interview on why she was committed to CNAC's leadership reflecting the community. "The one thing we did was to emphasize that while you should be educated, that education, degrees, college degrees were not essential [here]. If you could articulate the need, if you knew what that need was, if you were aware of the kinds of games that white folk play that was the real thing."

In the summer of 1962, CNAC focused on voter registration and an effort to get out the vote. They wanted to replace state senator Frederick Malkus, who had opposed legislation that would have allowed additional industries into Dorchester County, Maryland. The lack of industrial jobs limited opportunities for the African-American community.

Richardson was focused on determining the priorities of the Black community, reinforced by a lesson she learned from her grandfather which was to learn about the important issues the members of a community care about most. One of the first things she did was conduct a survey of the Black community to help determine priorities. Data was collected door-to-door and analyzed by faculty at Swarthmore College. The survey collected the following statistics as what residents considered to be the most pressing issue. The survey found that African American residents wanted the most important issues (in order from greatest to least) are jobs, housing, improved schools, open accommodations, and ending police brutality. Before collecting the data, Richardson expected public accommodations to be their biggest concern because it had been the main focus of the protest; however, after analyzing the results, CNAC began a multipronged campaign to encourage black voter registration, increase employment opportunities for black workers, and end racially segregated education by having black parents apply to transfer their children to white schools. As the new demands were being made and the movement became more revolutionary, white racist resistance increased too.  Two 15-year-old students, Dwight Cromwell and Dinez White, were arrested for praying outside a segregated facility. Both individuals received indeterminate sentences in a juvenile facility and these sentences resulted in outrage from the Black community. Large marches and protests increased, which were often met by white mobs. This is when the philosophy within the Black community in Cambridge changed from  “nonviolent resistance” to “armed self-defense." As Herbert St. Clair, a Black businessman said, “We are not going to initiate violence. But if we are attacked, we are not going to turn the other cheek."

By June 1963, the Cambridge protests allowed students, and activists from around the nation. On June 11, 1963, white patrons at Dizzyland had attacked six white and black demonstrators conducting a sit-in there. General Gelston of the National Guard announced that he was changing the rules of martial law: he announced a curfew of 9 P.M. instead of 10, stores were to close at 2 P.M. instead of 9 P.M., firearms were banned, and automobile searches by police and National Guard were authorized. At 8 P.M. that night 250 African Americans staged a "freedom walk" to the Dorchester County Courthouse. Shortly after the demonstrators stopped to pray, they were attacked and pelted with eggs by crowds of more than 200 white townsfolk. Two carloads of whites drove in and started a gun fight with armed African Americans. State police used tear gas and guns to disperse the mob. The federal government intervened in an effort to end the violence and protests. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and other Justice Department and housing officials brokered a five-point "Treaty of Cambridge", to include a statement for equal rights, that was signed in July. The Attorney General, representatives of the State Of Maryland, local black leadership-including Richardson, and elected Cambridge officials were all signatories. One June 13, 1963, another mass civil rights march was held. The Black community in Cambridge came with protection this time. Armed men were protecting the demonstrators and they set up a perimeter around the black community. The nigh after, a fight broke out between the White and Black community and there was an exchange of gunshots. Several people were wounded and some white businesses were set on fire. During this series of protests in 1963 is where the famous photograph of Richardson pushing aside the bayonet and rifle of a National Guardsman emerged from.

As a result of the accumulation of protests and demonstrations, the administration of Gov. Milliard J. Tawes offered a plan of gradual desegregation. However, it was rejected by CNAC and Tawes responded by sending in the National Guard for three weeks. After the withdrawal of the National Guard, CNAC resumed protests.

On July 12, 1963, a white racist mob attacked protesters sitting in a restaurant.  The Black residents fought back, but there was another attack later that night. After those incidents, Governor Tawes sent in the National Guard for nearly two years. This was the longest occupation of any community since the Reconstruction period after the American Civil War. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy arranged a settlement where if the CNAC agreed to stop protesting, then in return there would be an end to segregation in public accommodations, desegregation of public schools, construction of public housing, and implementation of a jobs program funded by the Federal government. This agreement did not last and ended almost immediately when the Dorchester Business and Citizens Association filed referendum petitions to overturn the agreement. Richardson took a revolutionary stance on the issue as she announced that the CNAC would not be taking part in the referendum. A significant quote that encaptures Richardson’s view is when she said that “A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom. A first-class citizen does not plead to the white power structure to give him something that the whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights." The Treaty of Cambridge was signed by July 23, 1963. It helped local activists secure victories in resources for public housing, the protection of voting rights, and the establishment of a body to investigate Civil Rights violations. 

By this time, national publications wrote stories and reports about why Glorida Richardson opposed a citywide referendum because it supposedly allowed Cambridge citizens to vote on equal access to accommodations and housing. Gloria Richardson said that her white neighbors should not be deciding on black rights. Ultimately, the referendum was overwhelmingly shot down as she predicted correctly. The fight for desegregation also led to victories in union organizations that had failed previously. Richardson claimed that there would often be White members who wanted to educate themselves on the issue and would ask about the civil rights struggle. Many White workers were inspired by the CNAC campaign and recognized the power and leadership it represented. This helped to achieve a certain level of Black and White unity as White workers recognized that the Black struggle for freedom represented new power that would also benefit them.  This resulted in an improvement in involvement. Previously, although the Cambridge local consisted of both Black and White members, they were unable to meet due to segregation. Now, the Black trade unionists, with support from White workers, asked CNAC to attend meetings. In fact, there was an incident where the White workers openly showed their support. In a large meeting at the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) headquarters in New York, there were people who supported wage discrepancy that were sent to the meeting. When they started to argue, they accused Richardson of being a communist and wanted to remove her from the meeting. However, local white ILGWU members said, “Oh no. If she goes, all of us go,” demonstrating their support for Richardson and the CNAC. 

Gloria Richardson was selected as an honoree at the March on Washington on August 22, 1963. Before she was about to go to the event, she was told that she could not wear jeans to the event. That is a sexist request. To Richardson and other SNCC members, wearing jeans represented their solidarity with the rural poor, and “it was the default uniform when they boycotted department stores for maintaining segregation." However, she compromised and wore a jean skirt. When she arrived, she realized that her seat on the dais was missing. After finding a place to sit on the platform stage, Richardson was allowed to say “Hello,” to the crowd of more than 250,000, before her microphone was cut. I always say that one big mistake of the 1963 March on Washington were sexism and the suppression of more revolutionary speeches in the march. Gloria Richardson played a big role in the Kennedy administration’s decision to work with the CNAC as she initiated a series of negotiations to help Cambridge residents come out from under Jim Crow. By the summer of 1963, she was living her “egalitarian philosophies concerning community organizing and democracy”, and she was willing to risk her family’s standing among the black elite to achieve CNAC’s goals. For these reasons, Cambridge’s black community acknowledged her as its leader, making her one of few women to achieve that position during the entire civil rights movement. Richardson claimed that people working for the Kennedy administration tried to intimidate her into leaving the movement by threatening to reveal embarrassing gossip about her, including intimate details about her divorce and her affair. Richardson sent word to the administration that if the press ran that story, she would indeed resign from CNAC, but she would not go without a fight. In her personal life, she was not afraid of other people’s judgement, including her, at the time, uncommon decision to get a divorce.

On July 14, 1963, Governor Tawes met with Gloria Richardson and other leaders. He offered to integrate schools, ensure that a black person was hired in the State Employment Office, make an application for a federal for a housing project for black AMericans, pass a public accommodations ordinance, and name a biracial commission to work on the other problems that could not be solved immediately by legislation in exchange for a yearlong suspension of civil demonstrations. Gloria Richardson rejected to stopping demonstrations unless there was a full desegregation of schools and complete fairness in job opportunities. She said, “We wish to make it unalterably clear that we will determine, and not the political structure of the city, who shall speak for the Negro community." During and after the Cambridge movement, Gloria Richardson was criticized by racists, sexists, and moderate civil rights leaders. Yet, she courageously didn't back down from her core convictions. Sexists said that she shouldn't be a woman leader. Gloria Richardson said that she believed in self-defense. Richardson was arrested again, but officials failed to institutionalize her a s mentally incompetent. President John F. Kennedy made the mistake of saying that Gloria Richardson "lost sight of what demonstrations are about." The reality and the truth is that the violence wasn't caused by Richardson. It was caused by racists trying to harm black protesters in Maryland. Richardson said that people have been provoked and endured generations of segregation. People have every God given right to resist racism in Cambridge. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis wanted Richardson to be less confrontational and more compromising. Yet, Gloria Richardson refused to comply. She never advocated violence. She believed that nonviolence was a first step in demonstrations, but self-defense is needed if confronted with threats. She was right. Some local civil rights leaders and some black church leaders distanced themselves from her. Her actions proved to inspire future activists, women leaders, and other people in small towns showing that women have the right to show their voices. As a result of this movement, federal dollars began to flow to Cambridge facilities, including parks, schools, streets, public housing, and other projects. However, discrimination against the Black community continued despite the legal end of segregation.

 

In December 1963 Richardson attended a national meeting of SNCC leaders in Atlanta, where they discussed the future direction of the organization. Present were Bob Moses, Charles Sherrod, Frank Smith, John Lewis, Courtland Cox, Michael Thelwell, Kwame Ture (formerly Stokley Carmichael), Jim Forman, Dottie Zellner, Ivanhoe Donaldson, Marion Barry, and Joyce Ladner, as well as staff and volunteers. Ella Baker and Howard Zinn led questioning to help the mostly young leaders work toward their vision for activism. In Atlanta, they discussed and planned for an extended voting rights program to be conducted in the South the next year, an election year. 

After Cambridge

A month after the meeting with Governor Tawes, Richardson left Cambridge for New York City. She married Frank Dandridge, a photographer she had become acquainted with during the demonstrations and settled with him there. In New York City, Richardson worked at an advertising agency before taking a job with the New York City Department for the Aging. She helped ensure businesses complied with laws that affected seniors. Richardson also was advising the Black Action Federation (BAF), CNAC’s successor. BAF was established by former CNAC members because they felt that Cambridge’s “white power system was still impeding progress in all areas of Black residents’ lives." While largely retiring from public life, she worked with Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited and Associated Community Teams. She retired in 2012 at age 90. She has an interview with Gil Noble in 1982, Gloria Richardson explained her passion about helping student demonstrators at the beginning of the Cambridge movement. She said that, "there was something direct, something real about the way kids waged nonviolent war. This was the first time I saw a vehicle I could work with." Richardson always paid attention and was engaged in current politics. She worked in social justice causes. 

In a 2021 interview with The Washington Post, Gloria Richardson recounted that she watched as outrage over the murder of George Floyd prompted thousands to take to the streets. She was frustrated by what seemed like a lack of progress since her own work in the 1960s. Yet, she was pleased by the diversity of persons who supported the racial justice movements. During the years of the Cambridge movement, fellow protestors were predominantly Black, but in the 21st century, she saw a mix of races marching together. She recalled that they marched until the governor called martial law because they believed that that was how to get attention and prevent protests about the same topics another 100 years from now. She believed that these actions remain necessary in America today where Black citizens continue to face inequities in the “criminal justice system, housing, health care, and other areas compared with their White counterparts." Her legacy is more known by more people by the 21st century. There were women leaders like Rosa Parks and Dorothy Height. 

Lopez Matthews Jr., a historian and digital production librarian at Howard University, believes that she is not well-known because “she was a woman who was feisty and who refused to back down. As a society, we tend not to value those traits in women." However, those traits made Richardson a great leader in the civil rights movement, because she did not back down. In the biography, The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation, the author, Joseph Fitzgerald, believes that Richardson was not in the Civil Rights movement for a career. Instead, she was in it solely for the purpose of advancing Black liberation. He believes this is the reason why Richardson stepped aside when she felt that she could be of no further meaningful use in the movement. An oral history of Richardson is included in the 2006 book Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s by Jeff Kisseloff; in a review for The Journal of Popular Culture, Ray Schuck writes, "When Gloria Richardson mentions how she and others put red pepper on their legs to deter attack dogs, you understand the enormity of the struggle for equality."

Decades of Service

In 2017, the state of Maryland honored her legacy by dedicating February 11 as “Gloria Richardson Day." Although Richardson was not able to travel as planned to Cambridge’s historic Bethel AME Church to be recognized in person, she spoke to the packed church in a live remote broadcast from her apartment. Five months later, a fireside chat was facilitated by Kisha Petticolas, the co-founder of the Eastern Shore Network for Change (ESNC), at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Resort in Cambridge, Maryland. Gloria Richardson was a featured speaker at the Reflection’s banquet, where her remarks “brought 300 guests to their feet in a sustained standing ovation." Gloria Richardson helped to establish a powerful, glorious image for Black women in the United States. She replaced the image of a long-suffering martyr with the image of a woman as a warrior. When Richardson was asked how she would like to be remembered, she replied: “I guess I would like for them to say I was true to my belief in black people as a race." Today, there is a mural placed left of center next to Dorchester native and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman of Gloria boldly demanding justice. She died in New York on July 15, 2021.

The Legacy of Sister Gloria Richardson

More and more human beings are knowing about the outstanding legacy of Gloria Richardson. She gave courage to human beings in Cambridge, Maryland, and all over the world. Her pushing the bayonet away from one officer while walking down the street was very historic during the 1960's outlining the influential power of black women. She wanted her legacy to uplift black people, and she fulfilled her legacy in enumerable ways. Always heroic, Gloria Richardson used her wisdom and knowledge to defend the human rights of people. She lived to be 99 years, and I heard of her story over three years ago. Her granddaughter is Tya Young, and Tya Young said that she or Gloria never wanted praise or recognition. She was born to express leadership and be a beacon of light for the oppressed. Gloria Richardson led the civil rights movement in Cambridge (on the Eastern Shore of the state of Maryland). "I say that the Cambridge Movement was the soil in which Richardson planted a seed of Black power and nurtured its growth," said Joseph R. Fitzgerald, who wrote a 2018 biography on Richardson titled "The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation." Fighting for housing rights, health care, jobs, and education were actions that Richardson advanced as well. Gloria Richardson always proclaimed the truth that black human beings have every God-given right to use nonviolence and self-defense when it is necessary to do so. She loved her daughters, Donna Orange and Tamara Richardson including her granddaughters Tya Young and Michelle Price. She was our warrior for justice in more ways than one. 

Rest in Power Sister Gloria Richardson.

By Timothy