(2012). He ran as a Democrat in District #1 (heavily GOP) for New York State Senate. He later moved to Wilson, North Carolina. . Zellner recruited white southerners to join the Civil Rights Movement through his role as a campus traveler. (1967-1980). The KKK arrives at the University to set those five white boys straight. Hes smart, top of his class, and on his way to graduate school up north. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense." Raised in southern Alabama, he was the second of five boys born to Methodist minister James Abraham Zellner and school teacher Ruby Hardy Zellner. There was a reconciliation before the old man died. At that time, the 'Duke' doctoral fellow was writing a thesis on the federal funds market. Zellner, of Alabama, is the grandson of a Klan member. 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. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: a White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. Zellners Methodist preacher dad arrives for an impromptu family meeting in the middle of the street, right in between the college students and the KKK. And my father did, and he told me about it later on. 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. I just didn't want to believe that that's why, that they had a problem with the script or the situation. She lectures and writes frequently about the civil rights movement and co-edited Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. 2. The following information is provided for citations. He is the son and grandson of Ku Klux Klan members, but has risked his life in the fight to achieve The Second Emancipation. Continuing his life-long habit of returning from time to time for graduate studies, he completed most of the classwork for a Ph.D. in history, Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana between 1991-1994. But it didnt make the final cut. 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. After that, Robert ventured into the field of share market and business, which was an objectionable profession in his family in the past. We've been working on it for a long time. It was at these meetings that Zellner met SNCC members for the first time. Zellner Has Promised Big Revelations in the Case Kathleen Zellner, in a photo she posted on Facebook. Mr. Zellner became SNCC's first white field secretary and was arrested 18 times with John Lewis and the Freedom Riders. How could you not make a decision at that point? Bob Zellner est le hros d' Un fils du Sud , de Barry Alexander Brown. 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. 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 . Hence, Robert began searching for a new research fellowship program. It's Zellner who's "The Son of the South" a white preacher's kid from Alabama and the grandson of a Klansman. The Woodcutters Union Campaign, from 1967 to 1979 mobilized thousands of black and white pulp and timber workers. Well, my grandfather, he never changed his stance about supporting the Ku Klux Klan. The white supremacists and the neo-Nazis and all the things that have been going on lately that feel like we're almost fighting this battle again. Until 1962 Zellner was SNCCs only white field secretary. 0 likes. Lives in Wilson, North Carolina. Born in Alabama on 5 April 1939, John Robert Zellner was the second of James Abraham Zellner and Ruby Hardy Zellners five sons. When Bob was in college he was assigned to write a paper on the aftermath of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by iconic activist Rosa Parks, and the race relations . It was a hellish scene. Following Nixon's ping-pong diplomacy in 1972, Bob Zellner spent six weeks in China visiting paper plants, studying pulpwood harvesting, and lecturing at the National Institute for Minorities in Peking on SNCC, SCEF and multicultural work in the white community. He became who he is today, someone that has always been out on the very front line taking literally the physical and mental and emotional trauma of leading society out of a segregated mindset, MacQueen said. As the son of a Methodist minister, Zellners interest in civil rights was rooted in his religious faith. Zellners first job out of college was to be Counselor and staff at Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School located in Monteagle, Tennessee for the summer of 1961. She traveled to colleges and universities throughout the northeast region to recruit student volunteers for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. 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. Kathleen graduated from the Northern Illinois University College of Law in 1981 and then worked for a 2nd District Appellate Court justice and several large law firms. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, far from being heroes of the movement, hounded Zellner's friend and mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, and launched the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) a U.S. government attack designed to destroy the Freedom Movement. Bob's memoir, "The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement", with Constance Curry and foreword by Julian Bond, was published by New South Books in the November, 2008. When we were kids, Granddaddy, he was just a sweet old man. Zellner was arrested, severely beaten and taken out of jail by a mob, who put a rope around his neck and told him he was going to be hanged. Apply several spritzes of water or sea salt spray so your strands are wet. . What went through my head was the similarity of my fellow white southerners acting like Nazis, because by the time we got there, they had busted all their suitcases and all the students had books. A veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, she served as a recruiter for the Freedom Summer project and was co-editor of Student Voice, the student newsletter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She was the wife of the late Elmer C. Palmer and the late Lester C. Zellner. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. Whatever was necessary was what I had to do, and then going to the hospital and seeing James Zwerg and saying, "Your Freedom Ride's over." "SNCC was our life. If we had shown arms and openly been prepared to fight with arms, we would have been wiped out. Tentative Project Assignments, [1964], crmvet.org crmvet.org, Click Here to View Document I said, "I'm, Bob Zellner. A SNCC member and field secretary, he attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery. In Son of the South, out on February 5, Lucas Till plays real-life civil rights activist Bob Zellner. In one of her interviews, Kathleen mentioned that she had binge-watched the 2015 'Netflix' series 'Making a Murderer' with Robert on their home theater and was intrigued. While teaching in the Hamptons, Bob worked with the Shinnecock Nation on a campaign to stop the bulldozing of ancestral burial grounds for an upscale housing sub-division in Southampton, New York. 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. Bob Zellner, civil rights activist and author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, sent this . 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. Disowned by his family, his father became a minister and implemented his teachings into his own family, taking a major trip from being a southern racist to being a human being, Zellner described. Sometimes when we retell the stories, we actually soft pedal the amount of violence that there was. I was privileged to meet Bob Zellner at the Virginia Festival of the Book in March of 2010. They had busted all the cameras. Bob Zellner. In December 1961, Bob took part in Freedom Rides and was subsequently jailed with Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Georgia. It was our existenceIt was like being cast into outer darkness, because SNCC was our family in a very strong sense.. His first campaign through SCEF was the GROW project, Grass Roots Organizing Work, in rural towns such as Laurel, Mississippi. I said, "Well, no, that's the same movement, but they were there earlier." And now we have to say, "Well, unfortunately we weren't able to shoot there. Yeah. Voter registration worker Herbert Lee had just been killed by Mississippi Rep. E. H. Hurst. Robert completed his tenure in Atlanta and went back to the 'University of Florida,' where he completed his master's thesis on consumer credit. He brings to life heartbreaks as well as victories of the Civil Rights Era in a way that empowers and instructs the modern-day movement. In August 2008, the Library Journal gave the book a Red Star Review: "He tells a story that is sometimes horrific, always interesting and ultimately inspirational about a white Southerner's commitment to racial justice. 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