Bob Zellner
John Robert Zellner (born April 5th, 1939) was the first white southerner to serve as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Zellner recruited white southerners to join the Civil Rights Movement through his role as a campus traveler.
As the grandson of a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member and son of an ex-KKK Methodist preacher, Zellner’s potential for relatability with white southern college students made him a unique target for the lynch mobs who often terrorized SNCC travelers. Zellner’s time in SNCC, as a member of the original staff, meant he was working with Civil Rights Movement legends Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and Rosa Parks.
Biography
Early life and education
Bob Zellner graduated from Murphy High School (Alabama)|Murphy High School in Mobile, Alabama in 1957. From 1957 to the spring of 1961, he attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, graduating with a BA in Sociology and Psychology.
Zellner’s 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.
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.
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.
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.
From 1994 to 2003 Zellner taught History as an adjunct Professor at Stony Brook Southampton|Southampton College of Long Island University in Southampton, New York.
Civil Rights Movement
Bob became a staff member of SNCC on September 11, 1961, as a field secretary to do campus traveling. At his first staff meeting, Bob joined the Burglund High School students marching to protest the murder of Herbert Lee. Zellner was beaten, almost hung, and jailed as a result in McComb, Mississippi.
Up until 1967, Zellner worked with Ms. Ella Baker, Rev. 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. (1961-1967).
In December 1961, Bob took part in Freedom Rides and was subsequently jailed with Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Georgia. He was convicted and served time on the Georgia chain gang.
Part of Bob’s job description was to take photographs and write articles for SNCC’s Student Voice newspaper. (1961-1967). He also Investigated the murders of three civil rights workers with Rita Schwerner. The story of these lynchings is told in the motion picture Mississippi Burning. (1964).
In 1967 when SNCC became all Black, Bob and Dottie Zellner designed and organized a white organizing push in the deep South called Grass Roots Organizing Work (GROW). The project was also known as getting Rid of Wallace. Organizing in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia, GROW helped to start the Gulf Coast Pulpwood Association. The Woodcutter’s Union Campaign, from 1967 to 1979 mobilized thousands of black and white pulp and timber workers. Their south-wide strike achieved a rise in the price they were paid for their wood. (1967-1980).
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.
Political involvement and activism
Zellner also Campaigned against David Duke in Louisiana when the former Klansman ran for governor claiming that he was no longer a racist.
Zellner himself became a candidate in 1998 while teaching Civil Rights History at LIU in eastern Long Island. He ran as a Democrat in District #1 (heavily GOP) for New York State Senate. During this election, a fellow Democrat, Chuck Schumer from Brooklyn, was running for the US Senate. Schumer’s mother was a volunteer on Zellner’s State Senate campaign, so both of them organized vigorously for her son, the future US Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.
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. (2003).
From 2005 to the present Bob has traveled with the Faith & Politics Congressional Tours, as a featured speaker. Founded by Congressman John Lewis and Methodist minister Rev. Doug Tanner, the tour takes hundreds of Senators and Congresswomen and men to Alabama every year to commemorate Bloody Sunday and the passage of the 1965 Voters Rights bill. Since 2014, he also tours twice a year with Project Pilgrimage as a Traveling Historian.
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 O’Neal & Rev. William Barber.
During the 2016 election season, Bob and his wife Pamela volunteered for the Doug Jones for Senate Campaign in lower Alabama. Senator Jones served Alabama for two years.
Providing historical perspective, Bob has been a Guest Lecturer for Common Power. He also serves as an organizational consultant for Shirts Across America (SAA), a Youth leadership organization.
Marriage and children
Marriage to Elizabeth Pamela Smith. (2016- present).
Step-Children:
Nathaniel Luke Burgess. (1972-2003).
Theron Francis Burgess. (1974- ).
Ryan Gabrial Burgess. (1976- ).
Charles Starling Burgess. (1978- ).
Alanna Marie Burgess. (1983- ).
Step-Grandchildren:
Angelina Joslin Burgess. (2008- ).
Isla Marama Burgess. (2009- ).
Ziggy Geo Burgess. (2015- ).
Marriage to Linda Miller. (1992-2010).
Marriage to Dorothy Miller. (1963-1979).
Children:
Margaret Rachel Zellner. (1964- ).
Catherine Ruby Zellner. (1967- ).
Published works
The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. (2008) edited by Constance Curry and forward by Julian Bond.
Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism. Anthology. (2013). Edited by Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell.
Living With Others: Challenges and Promises. (2012). Chautauqua lecture essay.
Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions
- Honorary Doctor of Laws, St. Joseph College, New York (2002)
- One Dream: The March on Washington. Time Magazine. (2013).
- Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Indianapolis (2019).
Bibliography
Zellner, Bob, and Constance Curry. The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: a White Southerner in the Freedom Movement. NewSouth Books, 2020.
Jealous, Ann Todd, and Caroline T. Haskell. Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism. Potomac Books, 2014.
References
External links
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