Civil Rights Pioneer Interviewed Before
Annual Washington's Birthday Convocation
Pioneering civil rights activist Gloria Richardson was at the forefront of the influential Cambridge Movement in the early 1960s. Former Senator Birch Bayh was instrumental in drafting the major civil rights legislation of the '60s. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch has chronicled the epic struggles and achievements of the civil rights era. All three will received honorary degrees at this year's convocation.
As leader of the African-American struggle for civil rights and economic justice in Cambridge, Maryland, in the early 1960s, Gloria Richardson helped define the course of the 20th-century Civil Rights movement. She was also the first woman to serve as the leader of a major local movement.
The so-called "Cambridge Movement," which lasted between roughly 1962 and 1964, is remembered today as the beginning of an important new chapter in the history of Civil Rights. As one recent historian wrote, "Richardson became the clarion caller who beckoned the state and nation to do what was right... She held true to her faith in a moral cause, her belief in how to achieve results, and her compassion for the alienated."
Born in 1922, Mrs. Richardson grew up in Cambridge, in a leading family in the African-American community there. She attended segregated public schools, and then went to Howard University, where she received a B.A. in sociology in 1942. After working as a civil servant in Washington during the war, she moved back to the Eastern Shore and eventually became involved in civil rights, working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to desegregate public accommodations.
Cambridge's black population had exercised the right to vote since 1869, but nearly 100 years later still endured grinding poverty, an unemployment rate twice that of local whites, segregated neighborhoods and schools, and denial of access to the vast majority of the community's public spaces.
In 1962, Mrs. Richardson and other local parents formed the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), organizing sit-ins in movie theatres, restaurants, and other segregated public places. Eventually, however, they also began to target deeper social issues, such as housing, health care, and adequate wages. In the summer of 1962, "Project Eastern Shore" registered new black voters in the region and encouraged political participation after decades of suppression by the white establishment.
When civil strife broke out in Cambridge the following summer, and the National Guard was called in to keep the peace, Mrs. Richardson—as chair of CNAC—walked a difficult and dangerous line, negotiating forcefully with local and state leaders and federal officials while holding together her loyal followers amid heavy pressure, mass arrests, and violent attacks.
After 1964, Mrs. Richardson moved to New York City, where she resides today. She has remained active in civil rights and anti-poverty campaigns, and still, at 85, works in the city's Department for the Aging.
On the day before the Convocation, C.V. Starr Center Program Manager Michael Buckley and Jasper Colt '10 sat down with Mrs. Richardson at the Imperial Hotel in Chestertown for an interview.
Click each track to listen.
