During the 2016 election season, Bob and his wife Pamela volunteered for the Doug Jones for Senate Campaign in lower Alabama. First time I went back to Huntingdon College campus, I was arrested. Bob was an organizer of the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the first white southerner to serve as Field Secretary for the . Meeting them then and now was Zellner. I'm sorry, I'm emotional. There was a time in American cinema where the portrayal of Black bodies being brutalized by white racists was shocking. Twice Bob marched 273 miles in fourteen days, from Belhaven, North Carolina to Washington D.C., in an effort to save rural hospitals alongside over 100 community members, including Republican Mayor Adam ONeal & Rev. Zellner, Bob, and Constance Curry. Yet he was not following the trope of the white savior; a charge directly addressed, and discounted, in the film, as well as in Zellners 2008 autobiography, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, co-written with movement scribe Constance Curry. Lucas Till stars in "Son of the South," playing Bob Zellner, a fledgling civil rights activist from Alabama. Jim Forman arrived a week later with a tape recorder. It was painful. He was an English major for a while. After 50 years of an entertainment industry and news media that constantly shows blatant violence against Black people nonviolently protesting its no longer shocking or surprising. At heart, Son of the South is a coming-of-age story with the Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop. Bob Zellner. (2013). Trying to shift the destructive mentality that locked whites into racism instead of change, Bob continues to work with, among others, Rev. Thats because the Jewish half of what could have been a hilarious-yet-gripping buddy film was largely written out. Excerpts from our interview with civil rights activist Bob Zellner. It was painful. Joanne Jeannette Zellner, age 75, of Wisconsin Rapids, passed away Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at Edgewater Haven Nursing Home in Port Edwards. 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. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search. 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 started working on the script, and the first thing, I think the first draft of the script was done in about 1987, so a long time ago. 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. Prominent Civil Rights Activist, Freedom Rider and Author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. I was privileged to meet Bob Zellner at the Virginia Festival of the Book in March of 2010. He was born in Oshkosh on May 2, 1960 the son of the late Raymond and Virginia Miley Zellner. 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." His race proved to be useful for SNCC as he forged connections with powerful whites in rural communities that were sympathetic to their organizing. Did he ever come around? Yeah. He and the other members of the Equity Project Alliance believe it's important to remind everyone that the fight hasn't ended and we need to look at equity and inclusion and continue to understand how these systems are still very serious remnants of our dark past. 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. Bob works with the Eastern Long Island Branch of the NAACP headed by Lucius Ware and with the Southampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force under the leadership of Dianne Rulnick. I hope it's a young people's movie and I really hope that it comes through as a women's movie, because SNCC was led by strong women. A more interesting aspect of Zellners story to explore is why do white people have to dominate other cultures and what does it really take for a white man to disrupt a system that nourishes him? From 2005 to the present Bob has traveled with the Faith & Politics Congressional Tours, as a featured speaker. (2012). Help JWA continue to lift up Jewish womens stories, this month and every month, by. More than once, Zellner was beaten into unconsciousness. The first white Southerner to serve as a Field Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he worked with historical figures including John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, and Anne Braden. Zellner, Bob Biography: Robert Zellner was born April 5, 1939 in southern Alabama. So that was the way you join the movement, by putting your body on the line.. He said, "I don't know." In the early 1990s, studying at Tulane University for a Ph.D. in History, Zellner wrote a dissertation on the southern civil rights movement. At least the father and son, a reconciliation. They Have Listed Their Wheaton Mansion for Sale In December 2019, Chicago Tribune reported that Robert Zellner and Kathleen Zellner have listed their 7,396-square-foot Wheaton mansion for $2.1 million. Louise Palmer Zellner, 93, formerly of Emmaus Ave., Allentown, and Hellertown, passed away Thursday, February 23, 2023. He never felt any personal animosity from Stokely or any of the old hands, but [he] did feel it from some of the newer people. When he and his wife Dorothy Dottie Zellner presented the proposal for a GROW (Grassroots Organizing Work) project, it was turned down. Julian Bond, now the National NAACP Chairman and Bob organized the National Civil Rights Coordinating Committee. He's incredible. He came up with the idea that it's about the transition. It's just a very strong, terrible disease that people can't get over. During 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, Zellner coordinated volunteers and the Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi. (1967-1980). During that summer and the following year he was a trainee in nonviolence workshops led by James Lawson (activist)|James Lawson, John Lewis, and Diane Nash in Nashville, Tennessee. Zellner made it clear from the start that she intends to prove Avery's innocence, despite. In December 1961, Bob took part in Freedom Rides and was subsequently jailed with Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Georgia. SNCC Newsletter, February 8, 1963, crmvet.org crmvet.org, Click Here to View Document 2022 Son of The South Owner, LLC All rights reserved. Voter registration worker Herbert Lee had just been killed by Mississippi Rep. E. H. Hurst. This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Civil Rights activist Bob Zellner to share his fight with Pensacola, Pensacola business leaders band together to fight systemic injustice, Elizabeth Eckford in Pensacola to share how she braved hate as one of the Little Rock Nine. Instead, he chose to be an academic. Jeanine's mission, centering Black women's stories to preserve our legacies. During the summer of 2013, Zellner was arrested with North Carolina Forward Together Movement for protesting voter suppression and continued to work closely with North Carolinas Moral Mondays Movement.[2]. The screening was held on the 60th anniversary May 20 of the day Klan members attacked Freedom Riders in Montgomery, an incident witnessed by Zellner that led him to join the Civil Rights Movement full-time. 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. Carta Abierta del Directorio; Cdigo de tica; Directorio; Miembros. I hope they take away that people have, after this movie, is that it's a young people's movie. In 1963, he helped integrate the library and lunch counters in the segregated mill town of Danville, Virginia, the last capitol of the Confederacy. Especially when you couldn't have thousands of people demonstrating, carrying arms. 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. Bio | Video | Transcript. TV Shows. I would have loved to see Zellners relationship in the later years of SNCC when the movement evolved and Bobby Seale pushed to shift SNCCs strategy and have the white members focusing on educating white folks instead of building a multi-racial movement. Civil rights activist Robert Zellner tells Gianna about growing up in Montgomery, Alabama during the Civil Rights movement shortly after the premiere of "Son of The South," based on Zellner's autobiography, "The Wrong Side of Murder Creek." The grandson of a Klansmen, Zellner talks about how & why his father chose family disownment and left the Klu Klux Klan. 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. Son of the South will be available in select Theaters, On VOD & Digital February 5, 2021. He started working for the 'Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.' 2. Bob Zellner From Wikitia 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). After spending the following summer at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, Zellner was hired by SNCC to recruit white students for the movement, a position sponsored by a grant from the Southern Conference Education Fund. Beginning in the mid-sixties Bob worked on documentary and feature films, traveling to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. Part of it is that Jeff Sessions is alumni of Huntingdon College. His father, James Zellner, eventually left for Europe to support Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe during World War II, and when he returned, he left the KKK behind. My father was disowned by his father and his mother and his brothers never spoke to him again in his whole life. Hence, Robert began searching for a new research fellowship program. But I think what it's done, is it's exposed to the racism that was always there. It was at these meetings that Zellner met SNCC members for the first time. They work alongside Common Power, an organization that encourages civic action through community, education and investment in a next-generation of leaders. He graduated from Huntingdon College in 1961 and that year became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as its first white field secretary. The following information is provided for citations. Copyright 2023 The Forward Association, Inc. All rights reserved. Mr. Zellner became SNCC's first white field secretary and was arrested 18 times with John Lewis and the Freedom Riders. Youre going to love SNCC, she told him. He also serves as an organizational consultant for Shirts Across America (SAA), a Youth leadership organization. (Viewed on March 2, 2023) . A Comprehensive Document on Grass Roots Organizing Work (GROW), [1966], crmvet.org crmvet.org, Highlander, SSOC, and Organizing in the White Community: We Knew That We Were Not Free. It's a coming of age movie about a white southerner involved in the Civil Rights Movement and making the decisions, how incrementally you become committed. While focusing on breaking the hold of George Wallace and the KKK on poor and working-class white people across the south, Bob Zellner debated George Wallace at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts when Wallace ran for president in 1968. She had moved to Wisconsin to attend 'Marquette University.' Robert J Zellner, age 62, of Oshkosh, passed away at his home on Tuesday June 21, 2022. Along his journey, Zellner was insulted, violently attacked, beaten unconscious, and arrested over 18 times. It tells the often turbulent story of . Some of Wikitia's pages are sourced from Wikipedia.org's Mainspace and Draftspace. Bob Zellner's life is really hard to sum up in a two-hour movie, but Son of the South gives us powerful glimpse into the story of this Klansman's grandson who became a key supporter of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.. At one point, the ministers here that had worked with my father and Dr. King and Joe Lowery, they said, "Your Daddy's about to die and you need to go reconcile with him. Bob Zellner est le hros d' Un fils du Sud , de Barry Alexander Brown. This article "Bob Zellner" is from Wikipedia. He continues to speak publicly on civil rights and in 2008 published a memoir, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. Zellner witnessed the beatings, leading him to become a full-time Civil Rights worker. Robert took up the fellowship at the 'University of Florida.' It was painful. Where: Gateway Church of Christ, 445 Creighton Road, Pensacola. 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. Robert is from Florida. how much is bob tiffin worth; did bob zellner marry joanne. He suffered brain damage and post traumatic stress from the physical abuse inflicted upon him. How could you not become a part of the movement when Saint Rosa Parks told you to do so? After that, there was not a lot of question with the early SNCC people about my commitment, but I also realized that white privilege, would lead me go back to being white at any time that I wanted to, had I chose to do so, but I made a commitment that I wouldn't, so I tried to live up to that. During 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, Zellner coordinated volunteers and the Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi. Bob Zellner was white. As co-editor of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's newsletter, the Student Voice, Dorothy Miller Zellner helped craft the organization's message and report on stories suppressed by the mainstream media.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 . At twenty-two, he rode from Atlanta, Georgia to Albany Georgia on the Central Georgia Railroad on December 10, 1961. A 1957 graduation speaker at Murphy High School in Mobile, he received a BA from Huntingdon College, Montgomery, Alabama in 1961 with highest honors in Sociology and Psychology. While attending Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabamaan all-white Methodist schoolZellner was given a sociology assignment to research solutions to racial problems in the South. Zellners father and grandfather were Ku Klux Klan members. While attending Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabamaan all-white Methodist schoolZellner was given a sociology assignment to research solutions to racial problems in the South. After graduating from Mobiles Murphy High School in 1957, Bob Zellner attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, where he took a course in race relations and attended a workshop held by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Edited by Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell. I think that's the real message here. 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. 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. You can't not take a position in this. The script called for him to needle Zellner about being white and regard him with suspicion until Zellner proved himself, something the real McDew didnt agree to because it just wasnt true, both Brown and the real Zellner told me. UPTO 50% OFF ON ALL PRODUCTS. We are providing this brief biography for, The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Copyright 19982023, Jewish Women's Archive. Far more dramatic incidents detailed in Zellners book are left unexplored, such as his narrow brush with death in Danville, Virginia, even more dangerous that those he faced in the Deep South. The film follows his story, that of a young white man who fights for the rights of black people in the racist America of the 1960s. As the grandson of a Klansmen, he's forced to open his eyes and come . In the movie treatment, however, McDew is less expansive. Zellners peers and teacher remind him of the risks of going to a Black church, but Zellner blows everyone off and convinces his four classmates to attend the service with him. I met Barry through Judy Irola and she said that he was from Montgomery, graduated Sydney Lanier. Well, that was in the early 80's. 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. Jealous, Ann Todd, and Caroline T. Haskell. Their work supplied the Civil Rights Movement with its most significant assets, including the power of multi-racial solidarity and grassroots organizing. 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