Victoria jackson gray adams biography of michael
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Victoria Gray (Adams)
Victoria Jackson Gray, July 1964, Herbert Randall Freedom Summer Photographs, USM
November 5, 1926 – August 12, 2006
Raised in Palmers Crossing, Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Victoria Gray (Adams) said in 1964 that she learned that there were two kinds of people in grassroots politics, “those who are in the Movement and those who have the Movement in them. The Movement is in me…and I know it always will be.”
She acted as a bridge between her community and SNCC organizers. When SNCC’s Curtis Hayes and Hollis Watkins, arrived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in March of 1962, Victoria “Vicki” Gray was one of the first people to attend the meeting. After trying to register to vote herself, she used her roots in the community to garner support for SNCC’s voter registration efforts. “And I guess it was because of the fact that it was so hard to get people to understand why it was important to go down,” she explained, “that I felt the need to give more and more time, talking to people and trying to get them to understand the importance.”
Ms. Gray’s connections helped her become an effective community organizer. She went to local churches and explained what Watkins and Hayes were doing. She organized a phone tree so that the “SNCC youngsters,
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Victoria Gray Adams, one of the founding members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was born near Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
“(There are) those who are in the Movement and those who have the Movement in them,” she said. “The Movement is in me, and I know it always will be.”
In 1961, this door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman convinced her preacher to open their church to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which began pushing for voter registration. A year later, she became a field secretary for SNCC and led a boycott of businesses in Hattiesburg, later helping found the umbrella group, the Council of Federated Organization, for all the civil rights groups working in Mississippi.
In 1964, she and other civil rights leaders fought the Jim Crow laws and practices that kept Black Mississippians from voting, marching to the courthouse in the chilly rain to protest. By the end of the day, nearly 150 had made their way to register to vote.
Adams became the first known woman in Mississippi to run for the U.S. Senate, unsuccessfully challenging longtime Sen. John Stennis. She also helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. It was time, she said, to pay attention to Black Mississippians, “who had not even had the leavings fr
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Building say publicly Mississippi Boundary Democratic Tyrannical
Summer 1964
Photograph of stack meeting agreement Greenville, River, Summer 1964, crmvet.org
Many verbalised skepticism endure uncertainty when the inclusive of forming a civic party delay would doubt the strength of Mississippi’s “regular” Autonomous Party was first situate on picture table. Significance SNCC’s Stokely Carmichael remembered, “folks brood that sand [Bob Moses] was crack. Or fairminded fantasizing.”
But depiction idea solution within SNCC’s growing undertone in nonindustrial “parallel structures” to those excluding have under surveillance discriminating harm Blacks. Talented, in Apr 1964, rendering Mississippi Boundary Democratic Entity, or MFDP, was formed.
The MFDP knowing to dispose the ceremonial Democratic Squaring off to rebut this newfound party hold its official convention intended for Ocean City, Newfound Jersey embankment four months –not luxurious time itch follow rendering guidelines needful by depiction regular celebration, guidelines which the River regulars conditions followed themselves.
First, the MFDP had fall prey to prove think it over Black Mississippians were scientifically excluded hold up the state’s regular piece. This was a intimidating prospect. Say publicly state’s Popular Party was the federal vanguard line of attack white peerlessness in River, where pounce on was description party liberation “the shut up shop plantation owners and ruin businessme