Remembering SNCC veteran
Elizabeth "Betty" Garman Robinson
SNCC Legacy Project (SLP)
Betty Celebration of Life
Judy Richardson, SNCC
As remembered by Courtland Cox
October 12, 2020
All, it is my sad duty to inform you that Betty Garmon Robinson has died as a result of a fall she suffered on Friday. Her family is now making preparations for her funeral and will let us know if the SLP can be of assistance.
As remembered by Gwendolyn Zoharah
Robinson
October 12, 2020
This is devastating news! She was such a force for change and so committed to SLP's work. Betty will be sorely missed!
As remembered by Jennifer Lawson
October 12, 2020
This is devastating news. Betty was such an important voice with her unbroken history of community organizing, her deep knowledge of so many communities and her affection. What a loss!
As remembered by Judy Richardson
October 12, 2020
Keisha called me Saturday afternoon, right after she fell and they'd taken her to the hospital. The family allowed me to tell Dottie and Jean, since we were close (we just had our bi-monthly Fab4/Girlfriends call last Sunday and had to hold our annual trip this year due to Covid). When I spoke with Keisha last night they were making sure all family knew.
I had a long conversation with Betty on Friday evening. Dottie, Betty and I texted during the VP and presidential debates. I saw her for lunch week before last when she visited. So glad we had all that.
We're all still in shock.
As remembered by Sharlene Kranz
October 12, 2020
Oh such horrible news. The world is an emptier place without Betty in it. A great loss for us all.
As remembered by Maisha Moses
October 12, 2020
When I was 7 or 8 years old, Sweet Honey in The Rock came to Cambridge. Of course my parents took us — Omo age 6, Taba age 4, Malaika age 2 — to see them. I still remember that concert, and the songs on this album (Believe I'll Run on See What the End's Gonna Be) that we played over and over and over, the songs and the stories and the people behind them becoming part of us. Betty is in these songs. All of the "Leaves falling all around us" are in these songs. Somewhere on the other side parties are being thrown.
I love y'all and am thankful.
As remembered by Larry Rubin
October 12, 2020
No!!! Betty is so much a part of us, she can't be gone! She's with us still, no matter what.
As remembered by Cynthia Palmer
October 12, 2020
Although I did not know Betty nearly as long as most of you, the few times that I did interact with were special.
She was always kind to me and I valued her wisdom. I am always saddened to hear of another Freedom Fighter passing.
As remembered by Bruce Hartford
October 12, 2020
(Sigh) Another warrior done gone. She was a true Winter Soldier and an unfailing point of light in a dark and darkening world.
Betty Garman Robinson -- ¡Presente!
As remembered by Karen Spellman
October 12, 2020
This news of Betty's transition has left me breathless! I just can't believe she is no longer with us. Betty has been a ROCK to the SNCC family, with her crystal clear thinking, her caring spirit her steadfast dedication to ending racism and oppression. We must proclaim her name and and tell her story for all to celebrate.
Long live Betty Garman Robinson!!!
Rest In Peace and Power dear sister.
As remembered by Maria Varela
October 12, 2020
Lo siento mucho por su familia, incluidos todos nosotros.
As remembered by John McAuliff
October 12, 2020
Betty was of invaluable assistance in organizing for the Summer Project and other SNCC support from a faraway college campus.
She remembered our contact in later days and was an occasional warm correspondent.
As remembered by
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
October 12, 2020
Passing of Betty Robinson
We learned this morning of the passing of Betty Robinson, a movement giant, elder and co-founder and leader in the SURJ Baltimore chapter. We're sending love to her family and our comrades in SURJ Baltimore.
Below you'll find a note on Betty's life from SURJ national, as well as a number of resources for you to learn more about Betty's life, and especially her work as part of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. We will be sharing this on social media - when it posts, please share!
On a personal note, Betty modeled for me the kind of white anti-racist leadership I could be proud of and wanted to live into — humble, action-oriented, moving with deep love, and in it for the long-haul. I was lucky enough to sit at her kitchen table many times and will treasure those memories. Betty's legacy is one we can and should feel at our backs and lean into with dignity.
In solidarity,
Erin
Yesterday we lost a beautiful elder, mentor and comrade in the struggle for racial justice, Betty Garman Robinson.Betty was a long-time member of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and carried the learnings of that work into her work with SURJ. She was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the organization and was one of the founders of the Baltimore Showing Up for Racial Justice chapter. Many of us first met her at our gathering at the Highlander Center in 2015.
SNCC's powerful organizing work has greatly inspired SURJ's work and countless other organizations in our movement. Betty is also co-author of the anthology Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC Legacy Project, bringing that work to younger SURJ leaders she worked with., and she continued as an active member of the SNCC Legacy Project.
Betty was a constant and close partner and mentor to so many of us for years. She enthusiastically and humbly supported the leadership of young people. When coming through town, she would host us in her home, share a meal and stories of her life. And she always expressed such a sincere curiosity about what we knew, were learning, and expressed such confidence in our leadership.
Just in the last week many of us at SURJ national had spoken with her about organizing work. Betty was engaged in our electoral work to unseat Trump, bringing her experience organizing in Georgia to help inform our work with white voters there. She also was active in supporting new SURJ chapters that are being founded in response to the uprisings this summer.
Betty is someone who embodied so much of what SURJ is working to help white people in our movement to embody - a fierce commitment to racial justice, being in action and putting our bodies into the struggle, and a humble and connected leadership. She showed us what it meant to be in movement and active for a lifetime.
She died with her hands still on the plow. Our hearts are with her family members, loved ones, and all those she touched directly or indirectly. She has left us so much to be proud of, look to and live into in her passing.
As remembered by Fred Mangrum
October 13, 2020
I haven't been in touch nor seen Betty in a very long time. I sadden hearing this message of her passing. Condolences to her family.
As remembered by Timothy Jenkins
October 14, 2020
TO MY FELLOW TRAVELERS — A TOO SOON ELEGY
My sainted grandmother always told me to attach special importance to those whose enthusiasm brought them early to an event and who stayed late because of their abiding commitment.
My first encounters with Miss Elizabeth Garman, then a coed flower from Skidmore College, came in the mid-fifties when she joined in the fight against the right wing Young Americans for Freedom's attempts to take over the liberal United States National Student Association. She was fighting against the mass exodus of its Southern college membership in revolt against our endorsement of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and our support for the Free South Africa Movement.
Still later, I worked with by-then "Betty" in joint SNCC efforts for black southern voting rights and since then against Northern police violence as well as the defense of Black Women and girls in Baltimore and beyond.
In each instance, she justified my grandmother's advice to give special attention to the likes of a Betty Garman, who came to the call early and who stayed so long with her Hands on the Freedom Plow from the sit-ins to the coming of the surprisingly well integrated Black Lives Matter Movement of today. She was ever proving Carlyle's adage incorrect that "the making of history is but the biographies of famous men."
We can now all be deeply moved and grateful for her having come so early and stayed so late inside the meaning of our lives. Let her truth keep marching on with us all and those to follow us as well!
On our way to Freedom,
As remembered by Mike Miller
October 15, 2020
In 1962, Betty Garman was my next door neighbor in Berkeley, CA. She recruited me to join the SNCC staff. I became the SNCC Bay Area Rep in late 1962. Betty and I remained friends since those heady days of the early 1960s.
My partner Kathy Lipscomb and I stayed at her Baltimore house Fall, 2019 when we all went to a preview of Gene Bruskin's musical The Moment Was Now. We had one of our usual deep conversations ranging from families to The Movement to the state of the nation and world. Betty was special, the epitomy of the SNCC spirit. I will miss her. My condolences to her lovely family."
As remembered by Jennifer Bryant
October 16, 2020
Such a huge loss. I met her at a housing event in Baltimore when I was an organizer with ONE DC. We remained Facebook friends after. She was the kindest person and truly committed to mentoring young people to build a society better than the one we have. She will be truly missed.
As remembered by Lucia Hatch
October 17, 2020
When I was the lone New Jersey staffer outpost for SNCC during Freedom Summer, Betty was my lifeline to what was going on. She was always responsive and calm, and I depended on her for so much. I was so sorry to hear of her death, and I send condolences to her family and many friends and admirers.
As remembered by Margaret Herring
(Lauren)
October 19, 2020
The First Time I Met Betty Garman
In the fall of 1964, I worked in Batesville, MS, helping with the Freedom School, etc., and then I worked in the DC office of the MFDP during the Congressional challenge. After that I went to work in the national SNCC office in Atlanta.
My first day there, I met the other people there and went to Betty Garman's office since that was the department I was to work in. She was putting out a mailing to northern supporters asking for supplies and money for projects out in the field. We folded, and stuffed envelopes and put labels on. Then, she had to go to a meeting and said she'd be back in an hour or so. And I kept stuffing.
Pretty soon, Ivanhoe came in and picked up one of the letters. "Why are we sending out this crap?" he said. "Who wrote this?" I didn't know what to say ... it was my first day on the job. I was flummoxed He fussed some more and I kept stuffing. Finally, he moved on somewhere else.
After a while, Betty came back and I told her about what Ivanhoe had said. "Oh," she said, with a little chuckle, "don't pay any attention to Ivanhoe. He goes off sometimes." So we kept stuffing and took the mailing to the post office.
I learned so much from Betty. And I must say that as time went on, Ivanhoe was very kind to me.
As remembered by Lucy Johns
October 31, 2020
A friend [who] I bumped into at the March on Washington told me to contact Betty on return to Berkeley. Unsure what I wanted to do with SNCC, she encouraged me to think something up for myself, rather than putting me to work. I started with a full page statement "In Support of SNCC" for the [University of California Berkeley] Daily Cal, signed by over two dozen professors I solicited. [They included the only black professor on the campus, (D. Blackwell), a Nobel prize winner (O. Chamberlin), and K. Stampp and S. Wolin, whom some reading this may recognize.]
When I decided not to go to Mississippi in 1964, Betty set me up as Communications Director with a WATS line and huge answering machine. It didn't matter to her that I had no idea what a communications director was, she trusted me to figure it out. (I was the first in the [S.F.] Bay Area to know that Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were missing.)
After years of no contact, she found me about a year ago on one of her frequent trips to Berkeley. Grounded by Covid, we set up a monthly phone call to talk history and politics and books and existential matters. When I called October 28 and failed to reach her, I tried again. Keisha answered the phone. So I learned of Betty's untimely and devastating death.
She was, as so many have written here, a knowledgeable, curious, tolerant, and uninhibitedly loving soul. Never allowing myself to cry over so much going on these days, I wept for a long time that afternoon. I didn't know her as well as most here. It is heartening to read what they say, to know such a wonderful person was there for so many. The worst may be that she won't know that we vanquished the evil in the White House. Which we are going to do. For Betty and countless others killed this year by forces she understood and fought her whole life.
As remembered by Penny Patch
December 3, 2020
My heart aches. I knew Betty Garman in my years in SNCC, but not well as we didn't work together all that much. But later we became cherished friends. When my son Seth in his early 20s (the early 1990s) went to live and work in Baltimore, it was Betty who took him in and helped him get his feet on the ground.
It was then we began to stay with her (as so many did) when we visited the city. I learned so much from her — about then current social justice work, about Baltimore, and about how to sustain connection and friendship. In later years I met up with Betty and several other Movement veterans in Wellfleet, Mass every summer — where we talked politics, racial justice, shared strategy, as well as our personal lives.
It was Betty who introduced me to SURJ (mission being to educate and activate white people around racial justice) and so I became active in a local chapter here in central VT.
Betty, you live on in so many of us, young and old.
As remembered by Lauretta and Timothy Jenkins
December 3, 2020
Our dreams are now more lucid than our memories ...as it should always
be.
An Ode for SNCC's Sister Betty Garman Robinson
When I heard Betty had suffered a fatal fall, I said to myself, "Uh Oh, she still believed she could fly!"And now instead she has flown into our collective memories of what it means to pursue justice, to favor the least of these, and to insist on insisting against all odds for what is right.
She came early to her beliefs and she stayed late, long after others had abandoned them. Hopefully now at last there is coming a new crop of young believers like her to keep coming on, to keep the flame alive as fervent, resourceful and as committed to pursuing their light as well as the Dream.
It is no wonder that there are those of us who can still see Joe Hill at night as plain as he can be. After all he said some never die. And he was right. Let all of us fly with them bye and bye until the morning comes!
Let Betty, Joe Hill and countless others of our number always sail in us and with us.
With thanksgiving eternally
for their having so generously spent time with us.
Brother, Timothy and Sister, Lauretta — Jenkins
As remembered by Dorie Ladner
December 3, 2020
"Movement Warrior" who remained that way until the end.
I met her in the Atlanta SNCC office around 1963.
I last saw her here in DC @ the Afro American Civil War Museum
@ The Celebration of James Foreman's Life last year.
Dotty, Betty, Larry, Dorie (?), were photographed.
We all left eachother in good spirits!
As remembered by
Red Emma's Bookstore, Baltimore, MD
Rest In Power, Betty Garman Robinson
This week we lost a powerful and important leader in the struggle against oppression. Betty Garman Robinson passed away at 81. She was a life-long activist and an important ally in the fight against racial inequality. She was an active and ever-present voice in the Baltimore activist community, and to Red Emma's, she was a supporter, a friend, someone who connected us to established and older activists, and someone who would reliably call us in and kept us on track when we veered from the path. She was a walking teach-in, and she will be missed dearly. Watch this interview for the Library of Congress about her life and organizing in the Civil Rights Movement.
As remembered by
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) (SURJ)
Yesterday we lost a beautiful elder, mentor and comrade in the struggle for racial justice, Betty Garman Robinson.
Betty was a long-time member of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and carried the learnings of that work into her work with SURJ. She was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the organization and was one of the founders of the Baltimore Showing Up for Racial Justice chapter. Many of us first met her at our gathering at the Highlander Center in 2015.
SNCC's powerful organizing work has greatly inspired SURJ's work and countless other organizations in our movement. Betty is also co-author of the anthology Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, bringing that work to younger SURJ leaders she worked with, and she continued as an active member of the SNCC Legacy Project (SLP).
Betty was a constant and close partner and mentor to so many of us for years. She enthusiastically and humbly supported the leadership of young people. When coming through town, she would host us in her home, share a meal and stories of her life. And she always expressed such a sincere curiosity about what we knew, were learning, and expressed such confidence in our leadership.
Just in the last week many of us at SURJ national had spoken with her about organizing work. Betty was engaged in our electoral work to unseat Trump, bringing her experience organizing in Georgia to help inform our work with white voters there. She also was active in supporting new SURJ chapters that are being founded in response to the uprisings this summer.
Betty is someone who embodied so much of what SURJ is working to help white people in our movement to embody — a fierce commitment to racial justice, being in action and putting our bodies into the struggle, and a humble and connected leadership. She showed us what it meant to be in movement and active for a lifetime.
She died with her hands still on the plow. Our hearts are with her family members, loved ones, and all those she touched directly or indirectly. She has left us so much to be proud of, look to and live into in her passing.
—Showing Up for Racial Justice National
As remembered by Jon Else
I was thinking over the past few days what an influence Betty had on me, though I didn't realize it at the time, and she probably didn't either. Truth be told, I was a clueless college dropout fresh from Mississippi when she for some reason invited me to sign on as Northern Campus Coordinator in '64.
In the Atlanta office I was completely intimidated by Betty's incredible efficiency, drive, and organizational chops. She was fierce, wouldn't let you get away with any anything, and expected us to work as hard as she did (which was next to impossible, since Betty devoted 1000 hours a day to the struggle.) I'd be lying if I said it was a groovy relaxed workplace, but I emerged from the Atlanta office having learned how to organize, how to get the work done right, and with a passion for the gears and levers behind the struggle. Betty Garman was the one who taught me all those lessons, and I carry them with me today.
She earned her place in Organizers Heaven!
As remembered by Muriel
Tillinghast
Lovely flowers for a lovely and giving person. Really, in so many ways, she was the epitome of what a good SNCC person was — my apex of expectation for anyone (not that she was alone in this, but she was that, too): conscientious, diligent, competent, committed, courteous — all of that with a quiet drive. The world's gotten a little bit cloudier, the road a little more rocky with her gone.
For you fair winds and calm seas. . . Muriel Tillinghast, SNCC Project Director, Freedom Summer, Greenville, MS.
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