Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons regularly talks about her civil rights experiences during the civil rights era, including a story about her part of history when she attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and how Ronnie Moore deserves more attention, in part, because he spent time in a Louisiana jail to fight for our freedoms.
It was a tense time.
Civil rights leaders and organizations led the charge, making desegregation a national issue rather than a Southern matter. Bayard Rustin was a key coordinator and facilitator of the 1963 march. He worked closely with A. Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
Ronnie Moore
They brought in Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP; Martin Luther King Jr., chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; John Lewis, president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League, and James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality.
Each of the “Big Six” leaders were at the march on Aug. 28, 1963 — but not Farmer, and he was supposed to introduce King.
Farmer decided it was more important to stay with lesser-known civil rights activists who were doing grassroots advocacy. “He didn’t want to leave us in jail because he thought that would be a clear opening for the Klan,” Moore told me.
Farmer and Moore watched the march on a 12-inch, black-and-white television in a jail cell they shared with three others who had been arrested. Moore, who bunked just a few feet away from Farmer, asked their White jailer to let them see the march.
At one point, Moore recalls, Farmer asked him, “Ronnie, do you think we’ll ever have a Black president?”
“I didn’t answer,” Moore told me. “The Lord answered him in 2008.”
Moore, Farmer and the other men were in that jail from about mid-August until they were released days after the Washington march.
Farmer returned to New York. Moore continued the fight for equality and freedom as a CORE field secretary in Louisiana.
It’s one thing to read about this history in a book or to hear a speaker talk about it on a stage. This was different.
A group of academics, advocates, educators and college students spent a recent Friday at Tulane’s Amistad Center, learning from Moore and Dodie Smith, both legendary civil rights and voter-registration advocates. Afterward, I boarded a 55-passenger bus with local college students for a trip to Donaldsonville, a community of about 7,000 with a rich history. It was a full day with stops at the jail, the Rosenwald School, the River Road African American Museum and Donaldsonville City Hall.
As a lifelong learner of history, especially civil rights history, I had heard and read about a number of the stories that Moore and Smith shared. But hearing them in person revealed new information, some different references, and some twists. The jail has no A/C. No water. No electricity. And it stinks.
Moore, who has a home in Baton Rouge and a place in Jefferson Parish, returned to the jail about 25 years ago and again about 10 years ago. Each visit brings back painful memories, but he told the students he’s not bitter. He led a session that, in part, explained that we do our best fighting for a cause when we do it with love.
The trip partners included the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola; the Amistad Research Center and School of Professional Advancement at Tulane; the Center for Racial Justice at Dillard; the River Road Museum in Donaldsonville, and the Friends of the Freedom House. Encouraged by the response, they plan to build on this experience.
Dillard’s Dr. Ashraf Esmail brought about 10 students on the trip. A native of Ohio who grew up in Harahan, he graduated from Archbishop Rummel and has worked at Dillard for 11 years. Dillard has hosted Andrew Young and other famous civil rights leaders, but this was different.
Kamrin Jones, 18, a Benjamin Franklin High School graduate and now a Loyola freshman finance major, did not expect much from the trip, but he had an epiphany. “We have this idea that the civil rights era was a long time ago,” he said. “These people are still alive.”
Moore, who can officially be called Dr. Ronnie Moore since he received an honorary doctorate from Loyola in May, wasn’t surprised. “You can’t teach history in a classroom,” he said. “It has to be experiential.”
We need to introduce ourselves, our children and our grandchildren to our shared history. We also need to hear from those who lived it while they are still with us.
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Publish date : 2024-09-06 07:00:00
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