Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 2018)
Page 12 The Skanner January 10, 2018 Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘Keep on Pushing’: Dore and Joyce Ladner Reflect on Movement G eorgetown Univer- sity history profes- sor Michael Kazin is seated among the students for his class, “U.S. in the 1960s.” He has surrendered his stage to- day to Dorie Ladner, 72, who is talking with the class about her years in Mississippi working to desegregate buses as a Freedom Rider, and her experiences organizing Freedom Summer in 1964. The names of many of Freedom Summer’s martyrs and survivors flutter by quickly in her lecture. At least twice she mentions the name Mar- ion Barry, an organizer in Mississippi before later becoming mayor of Washington D.C., and it seems to whiz past the students each time. Near the end of Lad- ner’s visit, a student asks how the movement end- ed. “It hasn’t ended,” says Ladner. Ladner knows this in more than an academic sense. She helped coor- dinate a great number of the civil rights sit-ins leading up to Freedom Summer, and she par- ticipated in every major civil rights march from 1963 to 1968. Her work started in the early 1960s with the Student Non- violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), with which she helped deseg- regate lunch counters and buses. She was a founding member of the Council of Federated Or- Dorie Ladner reflects on organizing during Freedom Summer, and the ongoing push for voting rights. ganizations, or COFO, the umbrella or- ganization covering SNCC, the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and Joyce Ladner reflects on organizing during the Southern Freedom Summer, and the ongoing push for C h r i s t i a n voting rights. Leadership Conference (SCLC) in so many to be crumbling. Dorie Ladner likes to 1962. Her sister, Joyce Lad- speak about the difficult ner, younger by just a choices and sacrifices she year, also worked with and her colleagues made these critical civil rights to develop those sit-ins organizations and built and Freedom Rides into on that experience to lat- an effective movement. er author a considerable One of those decisions block of scholarship on involved drawing white African-American girls activists down from the and black leadership. She North to help with the went on to serve as pres- Freedom Summer voter ident of Howard Uni- registration drives — a versity in D.C. in the late decision that some of ’90s, and then as a senior her SNCC and COFO col- fellow in the Brookings leagues didn’t view fa- Institution’s government vorably. But there were few al- studies program. Dorie Ladner, mean- ternatives, a fact Dorie’s while, kept the spirit of sister Joyce is quick to Freedom Summer alive hammer home. Joyce said by continuing to mobi- recruiting White North- lize around social justice erners for Freedom Sum- and through her work mer was absolutely nec- with the Martin Luther essary in the face of the violence, the Klu Klux King Center in Atlanta. Klan, the police, the dogs, ‘The violence kept the fire hoses, the bullet coming down harder’ The sisters are living that took Medgar Evers’s proof that the movement life in front of his family hasn’t ended. It’s for this — the terror. “We were really play- reason that I reached out ing guerilla warfare,” to them to talk about how says Joyce. “It was like the lessons of Freedom we just kept putting out Summer apply today, fires, but the violence when the voting rights T.J. KIRKPATRICK, SPECIAL TO PROPUBLICA By Brentin Mock ProPublica/Grist T.J. KIRKPATRICK, SPECIAL TO PROPUBLICA Decades after Freedom Summer, two Mississippi sisters press the fight for voting rights they fought for seem to Exhibit cont’d from pg 10 will also coincide with monthly associated pro- grams to engage the com- munity, including untold stories of women of color and a family day. And while the 1960s and 70s was an unprec- edented time of social and cultural upheaval, today’s politic climate – and the public uprising in opposition – has been See FREEDOM on page 19 compared to the similar vigor of those days. “Racing to Change” doesn’t leave that out ei- ther. It includes references to Black Lives Matter and current social justice movements. “Some of the stuff that’s happening now was the very stuff that was being fought for in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Richardson. “So there’s a continuum in helping young folks see that.”
