Oral History/Interview
Atlanta Student Movement Timeline.
Remembering the Atlanta Student Movement of 1960
Interview by Gregg Ivers 2018L: PDF transcript, Video
I was the Founding Chairman of The Comittee on Appeal for Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. During my tenure, the students from the six Historically Black Colleges in Atlanta worked as a coalition to successfully challenge segregation and discrimination in lunch counters, churches, movie theaters, court houses, parks and recreation centers, and co-organized The Atlanta Inquirer newspaper, along with Mr. Kusset Hill, then owner of Hill Office Supplies. This paper is still operating today in 2012.
In pursuing our objectives, we employed sit-ins, kneel-ins, jail no bail, filed a law suit that integrated all recreational places in the city, with the exception of the golf courses, which had been desegregated previously via court order. As we pursued our objecives, we engaged in non-violent civil disobedience and even though we were battered, beaten, spat on, hit in the head by working class whites, and had acid thrown in our face; we never fought back. We knew that the time had come to rid America of the racism that imbued the moral fiber of the South and had permanently subordinated Negroes as the "other" without any rights.
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