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. Dorothy Miller Zellner Director and Inspiration: Bob Zellner autographs his book, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, while chatting with Barry Alexander Brown, the director of Son of the South, a film executive produced by Spike Lee about Zellners work in the Civil Rights Movement. 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. So Bob, tell me a little bit about meeting Barry and beginning this relationship where he's taking your story and making it into a film? Bob Zellner graduated from Murphy High School (Alabama)|Murphy High School in Mobile, Alabama in 1957. I also hope that the takeaway to young people, and to women who are really leading the charge right now to save or reclaim our democracy, is that it can be done. While working on the dissertation, he taught the History of Activism at Rosemont College, PA. and Southampton College of Long Island University. He said, "I don't know, but you just open up the office every morning by nine o'clock and don't leave before 5:30 And take all the messages." Born in Alabama on 5 April 1939, John Robert Zellner was the second of James Abraham Zellner and Ruby Hardy Zellner's five sons. And he said, "I know, we've written our wills." And I said, "they're going to kill you in Mississippi." The Woodcutters Union Campaign, from 1967 to 1979 mobilized thousands of black and white pulp and timber workers. 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. They have also lived in New Orleans, LA and New York, NY. 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. In a voiceover, Zellner muses, A lot of white folks have a short fuse when it comes to civil rights. With Showing Up for Racial Justice organizers in North Carolina. Zellner worked as a nurse for several years before joining the Center for Constitutional Rights in 1984. 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. Bob and his wife Dottie joined SCEF, the Southern Conference Educational Fund to organize an anti-racism project for black . The documentary is airing periodically on PBS through 2010. Theres so much more to Bob Zellners life than this movie reflects. #cinderella #camilacabello #cinderellamovie Like and subscribe! Down it goes and off you doHate comments will be deleted. He was definitely checking me out. Up until 1967, Zellner worked with Ms. Ella Baker, Rev. Bob Zellner (left) greets students after chapel. In 1998, she became director of publications and development for the Queens College School of Law. Grow out the hair until it reaches your shoulders. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 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. A lot of people see it as a moderate or a even cowardly stance, but it took a tremendous amount of courage to be non-violent in those situations. Detailing the efforts of her and her then husband Bob Zellner, she discusses her involvement in organizing . Help us elevate the voices of Jewish women. 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." MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) The movie 'Son of the South' is now slated for release in theaters and online in February. The story of these lynchings is told in the motion picture Mississippi Burning. It was painful. Happy Womens History Month! We didn't know they were racist or what that meant. He is the son and grandson of Ku Klux Klan members, but has risked his life in the fight to achieve The Second Emancipation. Because they were instructed to prioritize urban areas like Atlanta, they relied on developing regional contacts to build their organization in the countryside. Bob Zellner was a member of the October League.[1]. 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. Zellner made it clear from the start that she intends to prove Avery's innocence, despite. 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. Until the time of . However, he still planned to move to Vietnam. I was working with a cinematographer, Judy Irola and we were doing movies around the world and we'd started out doing civil rights movies about the South. When he was able to take the book and the whole story and figure it out, what is manageable in terms of the movie. Somebody hands you a briefcase and that's the extent of SNCC. Jim Forman arrived a week later with a tape recorder. (1961-1967). As the son of a Methodist minister, Zellners interest in civil rights was rooted in his religious faith. And dont worry about the savior bit: My bet is that McDews character will steal the show. If we had shown arms and openly been prepared to fight with arms, we would have been wiped out. But it means a lot that he put me back in the will. The University of Chicago Especially when you couldn't have thousands of people demonstrating, carrying arms. Zellner was arrested at a CORE demonstration in Miami in 1960 and participated in sit-ins in New Orleans before joining Julian Bond as co-editor of the Student Voice, which built community among SNCCs widely dispersed field workers. 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. I mean, it is the devil you know? It's like, yeah-. When we were kids, Granddaddy, he was just a sweet old man. That one small action blows up in his face, and the university threatens to expel the boys just weeks before graduation. "You have to eventually take a stand, and you have to take action." After graduating from college in 1961, Zellner joined . But it didnt make the final cut. One Dream: The March on Washington. They have a daughter named Anne Zellner, who is a lawyer at the firm 'Ryley Carlock & Applewhite' in Denver. One was non-violence as a way of life, and the other Everybody in SNCC agreed in the earliest SNCC, that we would all be non-violent in terms of our public demonstrations and so forth. * This specific fee falls within this range. That's was very hard to see. Bob Zellner. Later, Robert began operating as an independent speculator and eventually became the CEO of 'CitiCorp Futures Inc.' and 'CitiCorp Options.' Zellner also Campaigned against David Duke in Louisiana when the former Klansman ran for governor claiming that he was no longer a racist. She was the wife of the late Elmer C. Palmer and the late Lester C. Zellner. It was a part of Barry's dream for the movie that it would be shot in Alabama, that it wouldn't be a real Alabama movie with real Alabama people. Contact him at [emailprotected] or follow him on Twitter @robinbirk. He said, "I'm not coming back. [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. Living With Others: Challenges and Promises. Apply several spritzes of water or sea salt spray so your strands are wet. It's about young people and it's especially about the strength and power of women, not only in the Civil Rights Movement, but then our nation in general. Bob and his wife Dottie joined SCEF, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, to . 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. I think that's the real message here. Maybe because it concentrates on a personal journey and an authentic Alabama one, its free from the stilted, hold-your-hand language of offerings such as Ava DuVernays Selma, in which Martin Luther King is told John Lewis from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is here to see you, with Kings aides pronouncing each syllable in a slow staccato as opposed to a quick Snick that they more likely would have said, and which mainstream audiences wouldnt have likely understood. 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. But they would be mistaken. SNCC was our life. 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. The moral aspect was that if you didn't fight back, you had a potential of converting that person. Zellner himself became a candidate in 1998 while teaching Civil Rights History at LIU in eastern Long Island. It was at these meetings that Zellner met SNCC members for the first time. 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 received his PhD at the age of 24 years. (2012). (2003). GROW organized poor whites in the rural Deep South, many of whom were well accustomed to the Ku Klux Klan in their communities. 351 pages. That's when they beat me really badly, and almost hanged me that day. We're here, we're here in Montgomery. Zellner was perfect. 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. At least the father and son, a reconciliation. 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. Bob Zellner, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek (Montgomery: New South Books, 2008). Bob became a staff member of SNCC on September 11, 1961, as a field secretary to do campus traveling. Photo by Julia Cheng. In Zellners experience, the last thing that changes with white southerners is their rhetoric, so he judged white southerners by their deeds rather than words. Copyright 2023 The Forward Association, Inc. All rights reserved. And Daddy said, he even put me back in the will. 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. 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. Mr. Zellner became SNCC's first white field secretary and was arrested 18 times with John Lewis and the Freedom Riders. 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. They were awarded compensatory and punitive damages. The film begins with a bloodied and beaten Zellner, riding in the back of a 57 Chevy with a group of fellow sons of the South, on his way to what could be his own lynching. The Zellners also work with Shirts Across America out of Seattle, Washington, where they teach children history, help them become civic leaders in their communities. To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. Famous for battles with segregationist lynch mobs, violent police, and the KKK, Zellner is also an organizer who brought Black and white Southern working people together in the GROW Project, including Klan members, on terms of equality and respect. 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. The project was also known as getting Rid of Wallace. Find Bob Zellner's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading online directory for contact information. Zellner tells how one white Alabamian joined ranks with the Black students who were sitting-in, marching, fighting, and sometimes dying to challenge the Southern "way of life." . Bob Zellner, a trailblazing civil rights activist, is the grandson of an Alabama Klansman. There is so much nuanced relevance to Mr. Zellners life story and his role in the civil rights movement, but sadly Son of the South uses broad easy strokes to attempt to tell a complex American story. Thats because the Jewish half of what could have been a hilarious-yet-gripping buddy film was largely written out. First time I went back to Huntingdon College campus, I was arrested. Scoop a tad of hair pomade, run your palms with it and apply the product to your locks. Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Indianapolis (2019). It's like when President Obama was elected, everybody said, "Oh, we can relax now," and everybody relaxed and look what happened. Robert is married to Kathleen Zellner, a well-known attorney known for representing murder convicts Steven Avery and Larry Eyler. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Thats sad and infuriating. A native Southerner born in a former Klan family, Bob Zellner dedicated his life to the fight for racial equality in the Civil Rights Movement nearly sixty years ago. That would be like a pitched battle. She traveled to colleges and universities throughout the northeast region to recruit student volunteers for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. If you fought back, you'd just continue the enmity. School of Social Service Administration The couple subsequently moved to New Orleans to work with the Southern Conference Educational Fund. They were the people that deserved to be followed. His race proved to be useful for SNCC as he forged connections with powerful whites in rural communities that were sympathetic to their organizing. 1. Those with a casual knowledge of the movement may be misled by the stereotypes of names and geographies to assume that Zellner is the Northern Jew and McDew a Black Southerner. Jeanine is a Writer, Actor, member SAG/AFTRA, AEA, Podcast host, Producer, CEO VisAbleBlackWoman Productions, Certified Health Coach and Conscious Dance facilitator. Memorial services will be at 2:00 P.M. on Sunday,. His commitment to the Movement was continually, and often violently, tested by white supremacists. John Robert "Bob" Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 in Jay, Florida. He started working for the 'Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.' 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