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Richard Charles Boone, Civil Rights Leader, Human Rights Activist

Teresa Benton Baxley writes a dissertation on Richard Charles Boone: Montgomery Civil Rights Activist and Proponent of Nonviolence, 1960-1973. The first official account of Richard Charles Boone was one of those servants who answered the summons of his God and his inner spirit to assist the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Boone served faithfully and tirelessly, totally committed to the nonviolent pursuit of equal rights for Black Americans, even when those around him failed to recognize the contribution and personal sacrifices he made. Richard Boone was indeed an unbilled actor in the Civil Rights Movement at least during the early years of his involvement in the conflict. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he was willing to play a supportive, secondary role to the major actors or leaders of these organizations. He was seldom involved in the policy discussions or decisions regarding civil rights projects. He simply accepted his assignments, going wherever he was sent. These assignments were frequently as the front=man in small towns and rural hamlets across the South. But his dedication to an uplift of his people made him willing to forgo the urge for the limelight status or top billing. Boone continued to place the cause of the Civil Rights Movement above personal notoriety or glory even when he established his own civil rights organization and led protests against racial wrongs in 1960. All the while, he remained resolute that injustice must be confronted based on the nonviolent ideology. His most significant work was carried out in his own home town of Montgomery, Alabama where beginning in the mid-1960, he challenged discrimination against blacks in downtown department stores and in housing. During this era, he fought against police brutality and for a food stamp program for Black Montgomerian. A program that would benefit all of Montgomery citizens who needed assistance. Boone also protested what he considered the unfair treatment of students at his alma mater, Alabama State University. Boone, still actively involved in the correction of any injustices he perceives in the Montgomery Black Community continues to be as invisible to most observers as history has made him. The contributions that he made, and continued to make until his death in 2013 should be recorded for posterity. Because no book exists that documents Boone's struggles and vast contributions to the Modern Civil Rights Movement, much of the research of Baxley in her dissertation came from primary sources, including the papers of Boone housed at the Alabama State University Archives, newspaper articles, papers of Levi Watkins, president of ASU during the era Boone began his civil rights action. Extensive hours of interviews with elderly members of the black community who were active in the fight for racial equality during the 1950 and 1960 were used to substantiate the dissertation of Baxley. Many of the interviews have been videoed for the preservation of their information for future researchers.

Richard Charles Boone was born on July 7, 1937. He was the seventh of nine children of David and Leona Boone. His family lived in Calhoun, Lowndes County, Alabama until they relocated or migrated to the city of Montgomery. He attended Daisy Lawrence, Loveless and Alabama State University Lab High. However, he would not complete high school. He went into the Air Force where he remained for three years. He would receive his GED and attend several colleges before entering into Alabam State University. (1957-1962)

When he was stationed in Alaska, he heard of the actions of Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Improvement Association. He learned that James Lawson and Martin Luther King were following a doctrine of nonviolence. Lawson had spent three years in India as a Methodist campus minster. When he returned to the United States he would connect with Martin Luther King and implement a model of Nonviolent Direct Action. Boone would attend the workshops and become involved in this movement of nonviolence.

While at Alabama State University, Boone worked as a law clerk for Charles Swinger Conley, a local black attorney. The job paid Boone twenty-five dollars a week but the benefits he gained from working with Conley were invaluable. Working in the firm gave Boone firsthand exposure to the legal challenges facing those involved in the Modern Civil Rights Movement. In 1958, Boone joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

On April 1, 1960, Ella Baker, a staff associate with the SCLC, decided it was time to combine the action of the students under one entity. Students from various Sit-In efforts at Shaw University, located in Raleigh, North Carolina attended. James Lawson, the Nashville leaders, Atlanta leader Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael, and students from Alabama State University attended the meeting to organize college students in a united effort to continue student-led protests against segregated facilities and racial inequality based on the non-violent philosophy reflecting Lawson's commitment. The organization was known as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or SNCC.

Boone attended the meeting to organize SNCC on the Alabama State University campus while he was a student at ASU in 1960. He gathered support for his new role as a self-appointed civil rights leader, he conducted citizenship classes at ASU.

As he strengthened his non-violent credentials, Boone attended a meeting held at the First Christian Methodist Episcopal Church on the corner of Holt Street and Glass Street in Montgomery where he experiences his first workshop on non-violence at the church. The training, led by Bob Moses, field director of the newly organized SNCC led Boone to follow SNCC and Moses across the Southeast and Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. He was often teamed with the more experienced SCLC officer James Bevel.

Boone's full entry into SCLC was as a field worker in Dallas County 1963. There he would encounter Mrs. Amelia Boynton, wife of Sema Insurance Agent and voting rights activist, and continue to work with James Bevel under a direct action program there. Boone duties included staffing, housing, and feeding volunteers in the local office. Also, he coordinated activities with the state and national offices and directing the local field workers of SCLC.

For most of 1963-1965 SCLC and SNCC worked with the Dallas County Voters League in a voting rights campaign in that area. In Selma, Boone assisted with bringing hundreds to the registrar's office in the courthouse in Selma to attempt to register. Local white officials managed to manipulate the voter registration system to control the availability of white voting registrars. The voting registrar's office was only opened twice a month. Few blacks passed the required test for registration, even though they were sometimes more educated than the registrars. There was constant intimidation from Sheriff Jim Clark. Many were blacklisted and couldn't find jobs. SCLC and SNCC organized protest marches day and night. Leaders were arrested.

Meanwhile, Boone continued to travel in and out of Selma and across the state. With their mutual commitment to the movement, Bevel and Boone became lifelong friends and dedicated foot soldiers in the war for racial equality. It was unusual after 1962 to see one without the other at seminars and workshops on non-violence. Martin Luther King had become to depend on them as the troubleshooters in counties throughout the state.

Boone recounts what happened in June of 1964, a year before the Selma March on Bloody Sunday. This account is documented in The Nonviolent Right to Vote Movement Almanac by Helen L. Bevel, (https://books.google.com/books?id=z6LdAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA309&lpg=PA309&dq=Rev.+Richard+Boone), the dissertation by Teresa Benton Baxley, and oral history in the Alabama State University Archives.

During one seminar in Dothan, Alabama Bevel and Boone received a call from Dr. King urging them to leave the seminar that they were conducting. A group of Blacks was demonstrating for equal voting rights and racial equality. The demonstators had barricaded themselves inside the church fearing the retaliation of the police and local members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Late afternoon, June 10, 1964 Bevel, Boone, and Harold Middlebrook setout from Dothan to Tuscaloosa in a green Nash Rambler with four bad tires. When the three reached Montgomery, approximately 133 miles from Tuscaloosa, they proceeded to D.W. Williams Service Station on the corner of Oak and Early Streets to buy new tires and fill the car with gas. As they proceeded on State Highway 82, a largely rural road that was dark and isolated, a tire blew. They changed it. Soon, a second new tire exploded. The three troubleshooters were unsure of what to do. They had no other spare. They were not sure how far they were from Tuscaloosa. Even if they were close enough to reach Tuscaloosa on foot, they knew that it was extremely dangerous for three black men to be caught in the open in rural Alabama at night. Returning to Montgomery or Dothan was not an option. Dr. King had been adamant about the need for them to be in Tuscaloosa. He had assured them that he would be praying for their safe return. The men decided that Reverent Middlebrook would stay in the car, lying down on the back sea, so as not to be spotted by anyone who might pass by. Bevel and Boone left the crippled car on foot. They walked along the edge of the woods in the pitch dark. They came upon a dark house positioned a short distance back in the woods off the main road. Bevel and Boone approached the house and knocked on the door, not knowing what sort of person might live inside. A poor black brother or a backwoods farmer aligned with the Klan. A masculine voice answered from inside, obviously that of another black man. The two explained their situation and asked for assistance. The person responding to their plea for assistance told them that they were already in bed. But a female voice could be heard admonishing the male to get up and help. John opened the door and instructed Boone and Bevel to get in his old dilapidated Ford pick-up truck. They picked up Middlebrooks and the four of them headed for Tuscaloosa.

As the group approached the city and the main intersection on the southside of town, they noticed a large group of cars and people gathered at the brightly lit intersection. Boone and his comrades did not know whether they were riding through a group of Klansmen or a crowd of Tuscaloosa civil rights activists as they slowly drove the old pick-up through the group without much notice to anyone there. They were still determined to rescue the blacks inside the church. The closer they came to the church they could see police barricades, angry white citizens, and klansmen along the road. Local and national newsmen and cameramen recorded the news of what had become a standoff between the local authorities and the demonstrators inside the church. Boone, Bevel and Middlebrook left the truck, thanked their driver, and prepared to enter the church. As they approached the church, Richard Villariani, a national reporter for NBC, stopped them and asked them how they had arrived. Uncertain of exactly what he meant, the three asked him to repeat the question. When Villariani did so, they pointed to the old Ford pick-up. Villariani with an eerie laugh, then told them that the Klan had prepared to kill them before they arrived at the church. He told them that the klan had been informed that Bevel, Boone, and Middlebrooks were traveling in a green Nash Rambler. Boone concluded that it had taken God several blowouts to remove them from that car and place them in a vehicle that could safely enter Tuscaloosa.

As Boone and Bevel tried to defuse the situation, attempting to speak with the demonstrators and local officials about the peaceful release of those barricaded in the church, they were both arrested and placed in jail in Tuscaloosa. While in jail Boone received a large cut across his face, forehead, and head. When they were released from jail, Boone, Bevel, and Middlebrook continued to work in Tuscaloosa for the next several months. Regular demonstrations and marches protested the discrimination blacks experienced. As blacks in Tuscaloosa began to realize some success, after Bloody Tuesday, and many other days of marches and protest, Boone returned to Selma and Bevel traveled to the SCLC home office in Atlanta. It would not be long before the two friends would be reunited in Dallas county. They would go from Bloody Tuesday with little or no national recognition or outcry to Bloody Sunday where the nation took a watchful eye with emorous horror of how Blacks were being treated in Dallas County.