In Son of the South, out on February 5, Lucas Till plays real-life civil rights activist Bob Zellner. Likewise, as with all based-on-a-true-story movies, facts that didnt quite fit a cinematic narrative are left out or massaged, concerning McDews character in particular. (2016- present). How could you not become a part of the movement when Saint Rosa Parks told you to do so? The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. SNCC was our life. Robert J Zellner, age 62, of Oshkosh, passed away at his home on Tuesday June 21, 2022. TV Shows. The beautiful thing about a biopic is that in less than two hours you can travel through a lifetime. And sometimes when I tell my university students that I was in jail with Dr. King and was mentored by Rosa Parks and written about by Eleanor Roosevelt in her last book, they say, "Did you meet Harriet Tubman or Abraham Lincoln?" Along his journey, Zellner was insulted, violently attacked, beaten unconscious, and arrested over 18 times. And he said, "Oh no, when we're able to, we get back on the bus." James Zellner, an itinerant Methodist preacher and member of the Ku Klux Klan, traveled to Europe during World War II to help support the Jewish resistance to the Nazis. They'd be entering into the present day, and letting bygones be bygones, and entering the new. I think all five of us students knew which side was correct and which side was right, which side was Christian, which side was American, constitutional and which side was terrorist and unconstitutional. This movie reminds me of the afterschool specials (morality movies) that latchkey kids used to watch back in the 80s. Not exactly, if you consider that neither are typical white Alabamans. Zellner then moved to New Orleans among other SCEF members to head up the Deep South Education and Research Associates. One would think a film about the civil rights movement wouldnt invite in the white savior trope, but the scene where our blonde-haired leading man carries Joanne (Lex Scott Davis), the beautiful mocha skinned Black woman in his arms (slow motion) through an angry mob of white people to safety is laughable. MONTGOMERY, Alabama The funniest line in the true-life story behind the Spike Lee-executive produced Civil Rights movement biopic, Son of the South, is in Yiddish. In the way too long Freedom Rider scene, not only does the audience witness Black women getting stomped in the street and punched in the face by white men, they get pulverized by white women using purses with bricks inside them as weapons. Thats what could get you killed. The temperature cools down. Some of Wikitia's pages are sourced from Wikipedia.org's Mainspace and Draftspace. 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. Shortly, Zeller wound up being hired by SNCC to conduct outreach to Southern whites. I thought I'd be able to go into graduate school, maybe be a minister or something and have a more normal life, but it was not a normal time. What do you hope is to take away from this, when people see this movie? Providing historical perspective, Bob has been a Guest Lecturer for Common Power. The actors did the best they could with a mediocre script. Mayor Adam O'Neal is at the right. Talk about that real life situation. Tell me about what your feelings were during that situation? Alex is survived by his wife . Release Calendar Top 250 Movies Most Popular Movies Browse Movies by Genre Top Box Office Showtimes & Tickets Movie News India Movie Spotlight. I said, "Well, no, that's the same movement, but they were there earlier." (2013). Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace. "Dorothy Miller Zellner." As the grandson of a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member and son of an ex-KKK Methodist preacher, Zellners potential for relatability with white southern college students made him a unique target for the lynch mobs who often terrorized SNCC travelers. I mean, it is the devil you know? Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site. And he said, "Oh good. Robert is from Florida. My father was disowned by his father and his mother and his brothers never spoke to him again in his whole life. Accueil Uncategorized did bob zellner marry joanne. Carol Ann thinks that Rosa Parks and the Durrs were overstepping trying to recruit them into the civil rights movement, but Zellner flashes back (within the flashback) to a time where he was pressured to brutalize some Black folks. 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. Movies. Bob Zellner. 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. This campus activism caused Anne Braden to contact him. He handed me the briefcase and he said, "I'll be leaving now." Founded by Congressman John Lewis and Methodist minister Rev. Our site uses cookies. Dr. William J. Barber II, the NAACP, voting rights groups, and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. madonna album sales worldwide soldiers and sailors memorial auditorium events jeffrey disick death brightness of a colour crossword clue 4 letters nba 2k22 lakers all time roster It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense.. They resulted in a takeover basically, of our government. Well, what was going through my mind at that time of meeting Rosa Parks and getting to know her and Reverend Abernathy. A few minutes later, when the songs were done, the old Freedom Rider Bernard Lafayette stepped up to Bob Zellner is a writer, known for Son of the South (2020), Breath of Freedom (2014) and Moyers & Company . 1. This month he will share the life lessons he learned during the movement with a Pensacola audience. Zellner is very much still with us, and was present for a recent screening of the film in Montgomery, as he was 60 years to the day earlier. Zellner also Campaigned against David Duke in Louisiana when the former Klansman ran for governor claiming that he was no longer a racist. Bob Saget's widow Kelly Rizzo sells their six-bedroom LA home for $5.4M after slashing $7.7M asking price - more than a year since his tragic death Advertisement In 1963, he helped integrate the library and lunch counters in the segregated mill town of Danville, Virginia, the last capitol of the Confederacy. He was untouched by the civilized world.. Thats part of what impressed McDew, then SNCCs chairman, to hire him. Tell me a little bit about your grandfather. More than once, Zellner was beaten into unconsciousness. 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. To register go to Eventbrite or the Equity Project Alliances Facebook page. We've been working on it for a long time. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. In 2014, Zellner was featured in TIME Magazine as one of 17 "living legends" of the Civil Rights Movement to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Menu. John Robert Zellner (born April 5, 1939) is an American civil rights activist. 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.. Meeting them then and now was Zellner. Obviously, those are still fresh wounds. At the Freedom Rides Museum: SNCC field secretary Bob Zellner meets with the Forwards Robin Washington in front of the Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. She had moved to Wisconsin to attend 'Marquette University.' Bob Zellner, civil rights activist and author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, sent this . Zellner Has Promised Big Revelations in the Case Kathleen Zellner, in a photo she posted on Facebook. The SNCC workers joined the students in front of City Hall to pray, and Zellner, the protests only white participant, was attacked and severely beaten by several white men while local police watched and FBI agents took notes. Bob Zellner's career as a civil rights activist, beginning in 1955 as a Murphy High School student, spans nearly seven decades. School of Social Service After two years on the SNCC staff as a field secretary for campus traveling, Bob enrolled to study Sociology as a MA and Ph.D. candidate, Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts between 1963-1965. So that was the way you join the movement, by putting your body on the line.. Zellner worked as a nurse for several years before joining the Center for Constitutional Rights in 1984. Zellner earned a doctorate in history from Tulane University in the 1990s and until his retirement taught the history of the civil rights movement at Long Island University. Bob Zellner. It was a hellish scene. Edited by Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell. They also help organize volunteers to visit swing states during the election to register voters. Wow. Those were people that you had to take a tremendous risk to follow them. Alabama with my new wife Pamela Smith to work with Senator Doug Jones and other southern progressives to, once and for all, confront our nation's foundational history of genocide against native peoples . A SNCC member and field secretary, he attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery. In the mid-1970s, the couple moved to Canada briefly but later moved back to the US. Robert found a scheme called the 'National Defense Education Act Title IV Fellowships' sponsored by the Department of Defense. The program focused on technical subjects. 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. Yeah. I said, "I'm, Bob Zellner. Thats because the Jewish half of what could have been a hilarious-yet-gripping buddy film was largely written out. 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. 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. copiously beaten up, to the point of living with neurological sequelae. The best result we found for your search is Bob R Zellner age 80+ in Southampton, NY in the Southampton neighborhood. Turns out, Bob Zellners granddaddy is a head Klansman and is part of the posse. (2003). The documentary is airing periodically on PBS through 2010. The couple subsequently moved to New Orleans to work with the Southern Conference Educational Fund. If you fought back, you'd just continue the enmity. Bob Zellner was a member of the October League.[1]. 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. She lectures and writes frequently about the civil rights movement and co-edited Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. Request Speaker. Zellner recruited white southerners to join the Civil Rights Movement through his role as a campus traveler. Born January 28, 1962, in Green Bay, he is the son of Mary Ellen (Day) Zellner and the late Bob Zellner. Because President West, Cam West, had taken a very courageous stand when the book came out in 2008. jonathan davis wife renee perez; md high school volleyball rankings. So again, does a white Alabaman directing the story of another white Alabaman smack of saviorism? But Granddaddy lived until about 93. Zellner graduated in 1981 from Northern Illinois University College of Law and clerked for a 2nd District Appellate Court justice, Chicago Magazine said. Was it you guys are just at the church, "Well, we're not really, we're just here to write a paper and I'm not getting involved with anything.". While working on the dissertation, he taught the History of Activism at Rosemont College, PA. and Southampton College of Long Island University. Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions, https://wikitia.com/index.php?title=Bob_Zellner&oldid=90263. During the summer of 1964 he also worked in Neshoba County with Rita Schwerner, investigating the murder of her husband, Michael Schwerner, and two other civil rights workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. 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. 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. Zellner was beaten, almost hung, and jailed as a result in McComb, Mississippi. I'm glad you're here. 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. The October League also developed a rural strategy. In 1963, he helped integrate the library and lunch counters in the segregated mill town of Danville, Virginia, the last capitol of the Confederacy. That brought back a lot of emotion to me. The fight has not ended for Zellner and his wife, Pamela, who still invest in their community. 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. 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. During the protests in McComb, a person attempted to pull out his eyeballs. 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. After that, Robert ventured into the field of share market and business, which was an objectionable profession in his family in the past. Nigger-loving motherf***ing Jew communist queer Goddamn Yankee from New York City, were the words used to describe Bob Zellner as a mob of white people descended upon him with chains, bricks, lead pipes, and baseball bats on October 4, 1961, in McComb, Mississippi. 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. 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. (2008) edited by Constance Curry and forward by Julian Bond. 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. One Dream: The March on Washington. Bob Zellner, a trailblazing civil rights activist, is the grandson of an Alabama Klansman. MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) The movie 'Son of the South' is now slated for release in theaters and online in February. John Robert "Bob" Zellner was born on April 5, 1939 in Jay, Florida. During Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 he traveled with Rita Schwerner while taking part in SNCC's and CORE's investigation of the disappearance of her husband Mickey, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. Zellners a senior at a Methodist college. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense." That made him a special target for the mob that greeted young Black protesters. That was my commission in the Civil Rights Movement. It was at these meetings that Zellner met SNCC members for the first time. How scary was that? The Annual Faith and Politics Congressional Pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama and other sites of the freedom struggle was led by the Honorable John Lewis and filmed by Robin Smith, award winning documentary director and producer and president and founder of VideoAction. Civil Rights activist Bob Zellner to share his fight with Pensacola. That's was very hard to see. It reminded me of Nazi Germany. Bob was an organizer of the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the first white southerner to serve as Field Secretary for the . His father was a doctor and had absolutely no interest in share trading or speculating, in spite of the fact that Robert's grandfather was a speculator. If he is still at it today, he nearly lost it many times in the process. average weight of a high school basketball player. I'm sorry, I'm emotional. That's really good. The museum is housed in the old Greyhound Station where Freedom Riders were attacked on May 20, 1961. Left largely unexplored is McDew, Black and Jewish from Ohio and chairman of the. There's absolutely no doubt about it. Back then, she wanted to pursue history and then become a professor. Son of the South was written, directed, and edited by Barry Alexander Brown, executive producer Spike Lee, distributed by Vertical Entertainment. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. All who were injured were charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Happy Womens History Month! We had to be, at least tactically, non-violent. Son of the South tells how Zellner chose to work for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the early 1960s. He is the son and grandson of Ku Klux Klan members, but has risked his life in the fight to achieve The Second Emancipation. Grow out the hair until it reaches your shoulders. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ms. Rosa Parks, Julian Bond, John Lewis, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), James Forman, Bayard Rustin, Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger. 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 . 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