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.”