It goes viral anytime the country is protesting police brutality or having a conversation about political upheaval or urging people to use their voice at the polls because so many of our ancestors never had the opportunity. It’s a picture of a woman pushing her way past a law enforcement officer blocking her way with a bayonetted rife.
Today I learned that her name is Gloria Richardson and she is 98-years-old.
Her name is Gloria Richardson and yes, she did survive. She'll be 98 this year.. pic.twitter.com/ygDxtVc1ot
— LJ (@ljmackjr) October 27, 2020
I have a job interview in a minute, but I wanted to dig around real quick and find out what I could about how this picture came to be, and now I’m annoyed that the woman Ebony magazine dubbed The Lady General of Civil Rights was never once mentioned in school.
In 1922, Gloria Richardson was born into a family of Black people that had been free since before the Civil War. They’d been able to amass property and assets (without having them stolen by whites), and by the early 20th century, they were a prominent, educated Black family in Cambridge (Dorchester County) Maryland who owned multiple businesses and rental properties. Gloria earned a BA in Sociology at Howard University and participated in a few pickets and sit-ins, but when she returned home to Cambridge, she mostly concerned herself with raising a family and local civic work.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formed in 1960 and Gloria was initially resistant to the organization because she wasn’t onboard with their policy of peaceful and nonviolent protest. When SNCC came to Cambridge in 1961, Gloria’s daughter Donna went out to support the demonstrations and Gloria became involved. The first adult branch of SNCC was set up in Cambridge with Gloria as its head and she kept the pressure on Maryland officials for the next three years. Gloria and CNAC (Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee) organized freedom walks, protests, voter drives, and Gloria, as a woman from a prominent local family, was at the forefront in negotiations with local government. Typically the women on the front lines of the movement were less educated, less well-off, and had less to lose. Gloria used her visibility as a prominent Black woman to make inroads with politicians — and she was an uncompromising leader.
“We can’t deal with her; we can’t deal without her,” bemoaned a white Citizens’ Council spokesman during the height of protests in the Eastern Shore city. Ebony magazine dubbed her “The lady general of civil rights.”
(cont. SNCC Digital)
As protest continued to grow in 1963, local whites demanded assistance from elected officials, the governor imposed martial law, and the national guard was requested. President John F. Kennedy told protestors in Dorchester County to stand down. Gloria Richardson told JFK he could go to hell. (x)
Protesting continued and whites attacked demonstrators during sit-ins and freedom walks. Police and the national guard used guns and teargas to break up protests, including a freedom walk in July 1963 where Gloria urged protestors to keep moving through guards with bayonetted rifles as they made their way across the city.
That same month, Attorney General Robert Kennedy worked out a Treaty of Cambridge with local and state officials that would give equal access to public facilities. Gloria Richardson and CNAC boycotted the vote because, “A first-class citizen does not beg for freedom. A first-class citizen does not plead to the white power-structure to give him something that the whites have no power to give or take away. Human rights are human rights, not white rights.” (x)
A few weeks later in August at the March on Washington, Gloria and five other women were honored on stage, but no women were allowed to speak. Gloria took the mic and said “hello–” before it was taken away from her. Here’s an interview for the 50th anniversary of the March back in 2013 where Gloria talks about that day and how women were silenced.
(skip to 18:44 – transcript at Democracy Now)
Protesting continued through Autumn and Winter until LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act in July 1964, a little less than a year after Gloria stared down a bayonet in one of the most widely circulated photos of the movement featuring a hero we rarely speak of by name. She moved to Harlem the next month, largely retired from public life, and focused on local civic works in the community since then.
Let’s take this energy with us to the polls though. They can try to intimidate us, but they don’t have bayonets anymore, and, for what it’s worth, we do have the law on our side this time. Do it for Gloria Richardson. Tell this administration to go to hell.
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