Randolph Blackwell
Randolph Blackwell | |
---|---|
Randolph Blackwell - Former Director (1977 – 1979) of the Minority Business Development Agency. | |
Born | (1927-03-10)March 10, 1927 Greensboro, North Carolina |
Died | May 21, 1981(1981-05-21) (aged 54) |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Director of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise |
Known for | Veteran of the Civil Rights Movement |
Spouse | Elizabeth Knox Blackwell |
Children | 1 |
Randolph T. Blackwell (March 10, 1927 – May 21, 1981) was an American activist of the Civil Rights Movement, serving in Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, amongst other organizations.[1][2][3] Coretta Scott King described him as an "unsung giant" of nonviolent social change.[4]
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Blackwell's father was active in Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association; Randolph attended association meetings with his father, and visited the prison where Garvey was held. In 1943, inspired by hearing Ella Baker speak, he founded a youth chapter of the NAACP in Greensboro. As a student in sociology at North Carolina A & T University (from which he graduated in 1949) he made an unsuccessful run for the state assembly.[4] He earned a law degree from Howard University in 1953, took an assistant professorship at Winston-Salem Teacher’s College and then became an associate professor in 1954 at Alabama A & M College, where he taught government.[1][2][3]
While at Alabama A & M, Blackwell became a leader of the 1962 student sit-ins in nearby Huntsville, Alabama. He left academia in 1963 and became a field director in the Voter Education Project, an organization that promoted voter registration among blacks in the South.[2][3] In March 1963, while attempting to register black voters in Greenwood, Mississippi with Bob Moses and Jimmy Travis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the car they were driving was fired on. Blackwell and Moses escaped injury but Travis was shot and hospitalized;[5] the shooting brought national media attention to the struggle in the south, energized the civil rights movement, and forced the Kennedy administration to investigate.[6] Blackwell became the program director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1964, but after a disagreement with Hosea Williams, he left the organization in 1966 and became the director of Southern Rural Action, an anti-poverty organization in the Deep South.[1][2][3][7][8]
From 1977 to 1979, in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Blackwell was director of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in the U.S. Department of Commerce,[2][3] but was beset there by charges of mismanagement.[9]
In 1976, the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change gave him its Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, and in 1978 the National Bar Association gave him their Equal Justice Award.[2][3]
References
- ^ a b c Chafe, William H. (1981). Civilities and civil rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black struggle for freedom. Oxford University Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-19-502625-X. Retrieved 2020-08-27 – via Google Books.
- ^ a b c d e f "Blackwell, Randolph T. - Biography: March 10, 1927 to May 21, 1981". King Encyclopedia. Stanford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
- ^ a b c d e f Blackwell, Randolph; Chafe, William H. (1973-05-05). "Oral History Interview with Randolph Blackwell by William Chafe". Civil Rights Greensboro. University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
- ^ a b Campbell, Colin (1981-05-23). "Randolph T. Blackwell, a Leader in Helping Poor Blacks in South". The New York Times. p. 21. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
- ^ "Shooting angers rights leader; big campaign set in Mississippi". Times-News. United Press International. 1963-03-02. p. 1. Retrieved 2020-08-27 – via Google News..
- ^ Lytle, Mark H. (2006). America's uncivil wars: the Sixties era from Elvis to the fall of Richard Nixon. Oxford University Press. p. 133. ISBN 978-0-19-517497-7. Retrieved 2020-08-26 – via Internet Archive..
- ^ "Rural Action Helps to Give Poor Southern Blacks Jobs and Pride". The New York Times. 1972-05-08. p. 55. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
- ^ Mitchell, Grayson (January 1975). "Southern Blacks Help Themselves". Ebony. Vol. XXX, no. 3. pp. 78–87. Retrieved 2020-08-27 – via Google Books.
- ^ Anderson, Jack (1978-01-27). "Blackwell: A Good Man in the Wrong Job". The Hour. United Feature Syndicate. p. 3. Retrieved 2020-08-27 – via Google News..
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- Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
- Atlanta Student Movement
- Black Panther Party
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
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- Committee for Freedom Now
- Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
- Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
- Council of Federated Organizations
- Dallas County Voters League
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- NAACP
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- Nation of Islam
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- National Urban League
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- Regional Council of Negro Leadership
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Regional Council
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- The Freedom Singers
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- Wednesdays in Mississippi
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- Gwendolyn Armstrong
- Arnold Aronson
- Ella Baker
- James Baldwin
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- Randolph Blackwell
- Unita Blackwell
- Ezell Blair Jr.
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- Diane Nash
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- Bernice Johnson Reagon
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- David Richmond
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- Alexander D. Shimkin
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- Modjeska Monteith Simkins
- Glenn E. Smiley
- A. Maceo Smith
- Kelly Miller Smith
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- Maxine Smith
- Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
- Charles Kenzie Steele
- Hank Thomas
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- Hartman Turnbow
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- Hollis Watkins
- Walter Francis White
- Roy Wilkins
- Hosea Williams
- Kale Williams
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- Andrew Young
- Whitney Young
- Sammy Younge Jr.
- Bob Zellner
- James Zwerg
songs
- "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
- "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
- "Kumbaya"
- "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
- "Oh, Freedom"
- "This Little Light of Mine"
- "We Shall Not Be Moved"
- "We Shall Overcome"
- "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
- Jim Crow laws
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- Hocutt v. Wilson
- Sweatt v. Painter
- Hernandez v. Texas
- Loving v. Virginia
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- Jews in the civil rights movement
- Fifth Circuit Four
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- Kelly Ingram Park
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- Bethel Baptist Church
- Brown Chapel
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- Holt Street Baptist Church
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
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- African-American churches attacked
- List of lynching victims in the United States
- Freedom Schools
- Freedom songs
- Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
- Voter Education Project
- 1960s counterculture
- African American founding fathers of the United States
- Eyes on the Prize
- In popular culture
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
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- Civil Rights Memorial
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- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
- Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
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- King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
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- Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
- National Civil Rights Museum
- National Voting Rights Museum
- St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
historians