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


Civil rights worker Bob Zellner grew up in a Klan family in lower Alabama.  

In The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement (New South Books, 2008), he tells how he became a civil rights activist starting in his college days in Montgomery Alabama. 

He later became a field secretary of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and 
was beaten and arrested as he worked in the South.  

Zellner eventually migrated to Southampton, New York where he taught at the former Southampton College of Long Island University.  

He became active in the local NAACP branch and he defended members of the Shinnecock Nation as they protested the desecration of sacred land, for which he was arrested and injured by New York State Police.

Bob Zellner spoke at Canios Books in October 2008, on the eve of the election that saw Barack Obama elected President.

Bob Zellner was introduced by Canio's co-proprietor Kathryn Szoka.


The music heard on this program, by the Freedom Singers of Selma, Alabama, was recorded by Folkways records.  

This is an East End Ink extra, presented on February 18, 2015.  

East End Ink returns next Wednesday with another piece of black (American) history: Civil rights icon and founder of the Algebra Project, Bob Moses, talks about the history of education for black people and more.  

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