The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement

Bob Zellner was arrested 18 times in seven states, he organized in McComb, MS., Albany, GA, Danville, VA, Talladega, Montgomery and Birmingham, AL, as well as New Haven, CT, and Boston. Zellner was charged with everything from criminal anarchy in Baton Rouge to “inciting the black population to acts of war and violence against the white population” in Danville, VA. From 1963 to 1965, Zellner studied race relations in the Graduate School of Sociology at Brandeis University. During Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 he traveled with Rita Schwerner while taking part in SNCC’s and CORE’s investigation of the disappearance of her husband Mickey, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman.

When SNCC became an all black organization in 1967, Bob and his wife Dottie joined SCEF, the Southern Conference Educational Fund, to organize an anti-racism project for black and white workers in the Deep South called GROW, Grass Roots Organizing Work, also called Get Rid Of Wallace. GROW built a residential educational facility in New Orleans and began organizing the Gulfcoast Pulpwood Association while working in Laurel, Mississippi where a wildcat strike involving black and white Masonite factory workers and woodcutters spread across the southern states. [From Bob Zellner’s website.]

ISBN: 9781588382221 | NewSouth Books