Web Tribute By Connie's Family
As remembered by Ann Curry
June 20, 2020
Connie died peacefully this evening. My husband and I made it to Atlanta. I read every email you all sent to her and then some! I held her hand and told her she was so loved.
Thank you for all your prayers and support.
As remembered by Judy Richardson
June 20, 2020
She was a very strong, consistently committed "and very funny" lady.
As remembered by Betty Garman
June 20, 2020
I am sitting with sadness that Connie, an amazing warrior and friend, is gone to the ancestors. She will be missed and remembered! Sending love and condolences to all in her family including her SNCC family and SLP.
As remembered by Larry Rubin
June 20, 2020
She will be in Heaven embarassing the angels who will be hard put to keep from laughing at her raunchy jokes. I truly loved her.
As remembered by Penny Patch
June 20, 2020
I am so glad you got to be with her. For me, Connie was an inspiration, role model and friend. May her spirit carry us all forward in these wild and challenging times. She is somewhere, hopefully not too far away, laughing and offering us hope. All love and prayers to you and your family.
As remembered by Dorothy Dawson Burlage
June 21, 2020
I worked with Connie for a couple of years when she was director of the Southern Student Human Relations Project in Atlanta. She had connections all over the South and organized seminars and conferences to teach southern students about segregation and racism. Connie loved to tell stories and that skill contributed to her being a good writer. She liked to tell jokes and she and Julian Bond attended a comedy school together. Connie told me she had a photographic memory and never took notes when she was in law school. She also said that she handled only one legal case after becoming a lawyer and that was to defend a cat. She always owned cats and her tender heart was revealed when one of them killed a bird and her reaction was to break down crying.
We were blessed to have her and the country is better because of her contribution.
As remembered by Joyce Ladner
June 21, 2020
Despite Connie's health challenges over the past few years, I will always remember her as a vibrant warrior who made me laugh with little effort on her part. She had the ability to hear clearly the voices of others without putting them through a filter. Her book, Silver Rights is a testament to her contributions to the struggle.
As remembered by Charlie Cobb
June 21, 2020
So sorry to hear this Ann. Connie was loved by much of SNCC and by me especially. He departure from us is greatly missed.
As remembered by Maria Varela
June 21, 2020
Last time I saw Connie was when Joyce, Connie and I were on a panel involving high school and college women at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Even though she was just coming off of a bout of illness, she was her engaging and humorous self, endearing her to the students in attendance. Rest in love and laughter, our sister.
I just spent an hour on the phone with Casey [Hayden] who is deep in her grief about Connie. She told a story about how Connie was the first to tell her about the sit-ins when Casey was at [Univ, of] Texas. And how demonstrators were being burned with cigarettes. And how they both cried about that. I asked her to write something, and hopefully she will do so. She sends warm regards and hugs to all.
As remembered by Jennifer Lawson
June 21, 2020
I am so sorry to hear this news. Connie truly made a difference through her life and her actions.
Yesterday, when we learned she was so very sick, I went back through some of the emails she sent over recent years and found her strong voice pleading for us to help Jamil in his imprisonment, buy Brenda Travis' book, and try to do something about homelessness. She also sent messages of sorrow on the passing of Unita Blackwell, John O'Neal and some of the many others who we have lost. My favorite email from her was one expressing her amusement at seeing a photo of Bob Moses and Charlie Cobb talking and laughing during a meeting down in Durham.
It was so very good to have her in this battle, side by side. She will be missed.
As remembered by Jim Marshall
June 22, 2020
It's with a heavy heart that I write about Connie Curry who was so important to me and many other movement people in any way she could help.
Her warmth and help in supporting me in my research for my two books about the Mississippi civil rights movement was crucial in my getting access to the M. L. King Library archives in Atlanta where I was able to go through and scan a large number of SNCC papers when other academics had great difficulty in gaining access to those documents if at all.
Moreover Connie helped many many others, among them Bob Zellner and Brenda Travis, in writing their memoirs and I am sure that the list of people she helped is a long one.
Connie also published many books herself, among them Silver Rights: A True Story from the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Struggle.
Jim Marshall:
The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy Administration,
1960-1964: A History in Documents (2018)
Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics
and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965 (2013)
As remembered by Bob Zellner
June 22, 2020
Memories of our SNCC Sister Connie Curry
Yesterday I was shocked and saddened when I got an email from an old friend in Baltimore that my long-time friend and mentor Connie Curry had died. We worked together in SNCC and the movement for almost sixty years. She began teaching me during the summer after I graduated from Huntingdon College. Connie invited me to participate in a Southern Student Human Relations workshop at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for three exciting weeks in August 1961 under the auspices of the USNSA (the National Student Association).B She made it possible for me to meet Tim Jenkins, Tom Hayden and other luminaries of the movement. I won't forget seeing Tim Jenkins duking it out (verbally) with the editor of the National Review, Willian Buckley. Fresh out of the deep South, I had never seen a black man talk to a white man that way. Tim called Buckley "crypto-Nazi, racist peckerwood, exhibiting a slave-owning mentality."
As our "adult advisor" to SNCC, it did not occur to us youngsters that Connie was only 3 or 4 years older than us. But she was wise beyond her years: one of the BIG THREE MENTORS — Connie CURRY, Howard ZINN and Staughton LYND. (Ms. Ella Baker was, of course, in a category all by herself.
Connie helped carry out Jim Forman's advice to write it down, make our own historical record. A few of the authors and scholars she helped with books are James Marshall, Brenda Travis, Bob Zellner and Aaron Henry.
She was the author of Silver Rights and other books on the movement.
Rest in power dear sister and say hello to Harriet Tubman for us.
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