 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Biography: Dorothy "Dottie" Miller Zellner
Dorothy Miller Zellner was born in 1938 in Manhattan. A red-diaper baby attuned to world events, Dorothy was looking for a way to connect with the emerging civil rights movement as she graduated from college in 1960. That summer, she seized an opportunity to go south with Congress of Racial Equality for training in non-violent resistance. Miller went to Miami with 35 community leaders and was arrested immediately in a demonstration. In the segregated jails, Miller (the only white woman civil rights worker in the project) did her time with l2 white women criminals. Miller felt she was finally in the right place. Though it "was very nerve-wracking and scary," Miller also participated in the sit-ins in New Orleans. In June of 1961, Professor James A. Moss from the Southern Regional Council offered her a research job and she went to Atlanta. In the fall, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Executive Secretary James Forman snatched her up and asked her to volunteer for SNCC at night. In the winter of 1962, he asked her to work with Julian Bond on SNCC's newspaper, The Student Voice. This newspaper, in the early 1960s, built community and morale within the movement's widely dispersed field workers and supporters. It also was one of the few publications reporting on the level of daily violence committed against southern Blacks and movement workers. Miller also became involved in public relations outreach. Her effective representation of movement work, designed to elicit legal, moral, and financial support, enabled SNCC to rise to national prominence. Married to SNCC's first white field secretary, Bob Zellner, Dottie joined him in the Boston SNCC office, where she raised funds and helped send food and clothing to Mississippi. She also worked with Kay Clark (Professor Kenneth Clark's daughter) to screen volunteers for the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The Zellners returned to Greenwood, Mississippi during that summer and subsequently to the Atlanta SNCC office. Facing the tensions arising from Black nationalism in SNCC, the Zellners moved to New Orleans to work with the Southern Conference Educational Fund after SNCC rejected their proposal that they remain affiliated with SNCC while organizing in the white community. While raising her two daughters, Dottie worked as a practical nurse. In 1984, Dottie returned to New York where she got a job at the Center for Constitutional Rights. During her time at CCR, one of her projects was coordinating the Ella Baker Law Students Internship Program for students of color. Since 1998, she has served as director of publications and development for the City University of New York's Law School at Queens College.
How to Cite This Page |
||||||||||||||||||||||
Twitter
Flickr
YouTube
Facebook