Chude Pam Parker Allen
Freedom Summer, 1964
Current Residence: San Francisco
Email:
chude.allen@gmail.com
I went as an exchange student to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia for
the 1964 spring semester where I worked with the student movement. I
also attended Staughton Lynd's seminar on nonviolence. Staughton was to
be director of the freedom schools in Mississippi and I was privileged
to participate in many discussions about the philosophy behind the
freedom schools as well as the philosophy of nonviolence. I volunteered
to be a freedom school teacher in the Mississippi Summer Project.
I went to Holly Springs, Mississippi in the summer of 1964 where I
taught young women in the freedom school. I am writing about this
experience and have been interviewed a number of times. I have two
pieces about the summer, plus an annotated bibliography in Freedom Is a
Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil rights
Movement, Susie Erenrich, ed., Black Belt Press, 1999.
In 1967 I began organizing women's groups, first in NYC and the
following year, in San Francisco. I taught workshops and seminars on
racism and white supremacy for women's liberation groups and conferences
and for the YWCA. I collaborated with my first husband, Robert Allen,
on Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United
States, Howard University Press, 1974, writing the chapter on the woman
suffrage movement. This book has been updated and is still in print.
I find I am now very interested in other people's stories. Most
activists have seldom, if ever, told their stories in full and I am
convinced we all have a lot to learn from listening to and reading each
others' words. Although I myself have benefited greatly from some of
the interviews done with me, I do not think being interviewed by
professional writers and academics is enough. I've helped to organize
reunion gatherings and have led writing workshops for activists. The
sharings have been profound and I encourage others to find ways to share
their stories.
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