R.I. civil rights chief Clifford R. Montiero discusses voting rights battles, previous and current

Rhode Island civil rights activist Clifford R. Montiero speaks with Boston Globe reporter Edward Fitzpatrick while taping the Rhode Island Report podcast.Carlos Munoz

PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island civil rights icon, Clifford R. Montiero, demonstrated with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the vote in Selma, Alabama. And now, with the 56th anniversary of the Suffrage Act in August, Montiero took part in recent attempts to pass more restrictive electoral laws in states like Florida, Texas, and Georgia.

“The basic premise of our country is that the people vote, the people participate,” Montiero said on the latest episode of the Rhode Island Report podcast. “And now you are putting up barriers. In 1965 I thought we would have ended this with the passage of the ’65 Voting Rights Act. But apparently there are some people who are still legally fighting (for) the abolition of integration and the abolition of color choices in this country. And they can’t win. “

Clifford R. Montiero, center, listens as then-Mayor of Providence Joseph A. Doorley Jr. speaks during the 1960s when Montiero chaired the old Congress on Racial Equality.

Montiero, 83, retired to Florida a few years ago after decades of civil rights leadership in Rhode Island. He served as president of the old Congress on Racial Equality and was president of the Providence Division of the NAACP for a decade. He also worked as a Providence Police Officer and Deputy Sheriff.

In May, Montiero was honored as a “History Maker” by the Rhode Island Historical Society, which recognized him for “having stood in Rhode Island for decades and worked tirelessly to improve access, opportunities and equality.”

On March 21, 1965, Montiero was tasked with ensuring security and handling communications using a radio set when MLK crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on a five-day march for the right to vote.

During the podcast, Montiero described what he saw as he crossed this bridge.

“When you saw the Confederate flags and the families yelled at and spat at and yelled at you,” he said, “I hadn’t seen that kind of hatred.”

But he and others persevered, he added, “Because you believed in what you believed and knew that every American should have the right to vote, that you had to risk your life for it.”

Rhode Island civil rights activist Clifford R. Montiero (left) joined Boston Globe reporter Edward Fitzpatrick on the Rhode Island Report podcast.Carlos Munoz

Montiero noted that America voted Barack Obama its first black president, and Kamala Harris is now the nation’s first black and first Asian-American vice president. “Yes, we’ve made progress,” he said.

But he said, “There is hatred in this country, which I think has always been there, but never as publicly as it is today. Hatred managed to open the door, turn on the light, and say, ‘You can’t kill us.’ Hatred says ‘we will win’. ”

Montiero remembered early lessons about racism and activism while growing up in Providence.

“I was about 5 years old and someone called and said, ‘We don’t want you to live on Roger Williams land’ and they said the N-word,” he said. “And I said to my mother: what is the N-word? I asked what the word means. And my mother sat down and explained it to me. “

Then, said Montiero, people dumped rubbish in front of their house, so his mother went through the pile and found an envelope with the names of the people who dumped it there.

“She took my sister and me – she was about 14, 15 months younger than me – by the hand, went to the house, rang the doorbell and said, ‘This is your trash. Don’t leave it in my house anymore, ‘”he said. “So my mother taught me how to act directly.”

Hear more by downloading the latest episode of Rhode Island Report, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, and other podcasting platforms, or by listening to it in the player below:

Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @FitzProv.