Dove Green
(1945 — 1981)

 

As remembered by Miriam (Cohen) Glickman
January 23, 2007

Dove, who had grown up in a white family in Arkansas, was proud to be one of very few white Southerners who worked with SNCC. I first met him in Columbus, Miss., in the fall of 1964. He was barely 18, but to fit in better with the slightly older staff, claimed to be 21.

There was a lot of talk in SNCC of whites organizing in the poor white communities in the South. Dove and I were in a group that tried this around Thanksgiving of 1964. We had learned community organizing skills in SNCC. The problem was it was dangerous to approach an unknown white person in rural Miss. It took only a few days for us to realize our project was not going to work. Our group came back cold and hungry.

After that, Dove worked in Jackson, Miss., until he left in April of 1965. I remember it was April because Jane Stembridge wrote a poem about his leaving. Dove also wrote poetry.

Dove got arrested in the anti-Vietnam war protest in August, 1965, in Washington, D.C. About 400 people, most either veterans of the Southern civil rights movement or Catholic pacifists from the Northeast, were arrested.

Tall and blond, Dove was proud of his good looks and his resemblance to actor James Dean. He made it through the civil rights movement without getting battered. He then got his nose broken by the police in the San Francisco State College demonstrations of the mid 1960's.

Dove enjoyed working with wood. He once took an apple crate and used the wood to make a dulcimer.

Dove died in 1981 in San Francisco.

by Miriam (Cohen) Glickman


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