BRIAN WITTE
RELATED PRESS
ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Gloria Richardson, an influential but largely unsung civil rights activist whose determination not to give in to protest racial inequality was captured in a photo throwing away a National Guard’s bayonet, has died. She was 99. ‘
Her granddaughter, Tya Young, said Richardson died in her sleep on July 15 in New York City and was not sick. Young said that while her grandmother was at the forefront of the civil rights movement, she sought neither praise nor recognition.
“She did it because it had to be done, and she was born a leader,” said Young.
Richardson was the first woman to lead an ongoing civil rights movement outside of the deep south. In 1962, she helped organize and lead the Cambridge Movement on the east coast of Maryland, with sit-ins to desegregate restaurants, bowling alleys and cinemas during protests that were an early part of the Black Power movement.
Gloria Richardson at a press conference with Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
“I say that the Cambridge Movement was the ground upon which Richardson planted a seed of black power and nourished its growth,” said Joseph R. Fitzgerald, who wrote a 2018 biography of Richardson entitled “The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation “wrote.”
Richardson became the leader of demonstrations about economic problems such as jobs, access to health care and adequate housing.
“Everything the Black Lives Matter movement is working on right now is a continuation of what the Cambridge movement has done,” said Fitzgerald.
To pursue these goals, Richardson advocated the right of black people to defend themselves against attacks.
“Richardson always supported the use of nonviolent direct action in protests, but once the protests were over and blacks were attacked by whites, she fully supported their right to defend themselves,” said Fitzgerald.
Born protester
Richardson was born in Baltimore and later lived in Cambridge in Maryland’s Dorchester County – the same county in which Harriet Tubman was born. When she was 16, she went to Howard University. During her time in Washington, she began to protest racial segregation in a drugstore.
In 1962, Richardson attended the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee meeting in Atlanta and later joined the board.
In the summer of 1963, after peaceful sit-ins in Cambridge became violent, Governor J. Millard Tawes declared martial law. When Cambridge Mayor Calvin Mowbray asked Richardson to stop the demonstrations in exchange for ending the arrests of black protesters, Richardson refused. On June 11th, white racist clashes broke out and Tawes called the National Guard.
While the city was still under the presence of the National Guard, Richardson met with US Attorney General Robert Kennedy to negotiate the informal “Cambridge Treaty”. It ordered equal access to public accommodation in Cambridge in exchange for a year-long moratorium on demonstrations.
Richardson was a signatory to the treaty, but she had never agreed to end the demonstrations. It was only with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that problems at the local level began to be resolved.
She was one of the country’s leading civil rights activists, inspiring younger activists who protested racial inequality in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.
In 1963, Richardson was one of six women on the stage in the decisive march in Washington who were on the program as a “freedom fighter”. However, she was only allowed to say “Hello” before the microphone was removed.
The male-centered black power movement and the fact that Richardson’s leadership in Cambridge lasted about three years may have masked how influential it was, but Fitzgerald said it was well known in black America.
“She was only active for about three years, but during that time she was literally the focus of a high-profile black liberation campaign and is under threat,” said Fitzgerald. “She is being threatened by white racist terrorists who call her house and threaten her with her life.”
Richardson resigned from the Nonviolent Action Committee in Cambridge, Maryland in the summer of 1964. Divorced from her first husband, she married photographer Frank Dandridge and moved to New York where she had a variety of jobs, including the National Council for Negro Women.
She leaves behind her daughters Donna Orange and Tamara Richardson and her granddaughters Young and Michelle Price. More on page 5.
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