Politics and Protest
“So close is the bond between man and woman that you cannot raise one without lifting the other. The world cannot move ahead without woman’s sharing in the movement.” —Francis Ellen Watkins Harper

The roles of women in our greatest movements were often overshadowed by a man who was often the face of the movement— the “one” with the guts and the tactful ability to stand for what’s right. We were always taught to marvel at the courageous men—the husbands and fathers. Oftentimes, in academia, I never had the opportunity to truly sit and marvel at our foremothers outside of Feminine Studies classes or Women’s History Month celebrations. There would be no foundation without people like Mary McLeod Bethune, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Fannie Lou Hamer, Assata Shakur, Toni Morrison and countless others.
This is an ode to our foremothers, the ones who came before and laid the groundwork so that the women of today could have a voice. Whether they were militant, nonviolent, filmmakers, every-day students or scholars praised by the academy, it is because of them that we have the beautiful activists of today. Evidently, some of our foremothers were born from the womb of Atlanta University Center—an environment that was built to foster the next generation of tomorrow.
During the Atlanta Student Movement, students could be seen creating radical change and refusing to accept the institutions that were put in place to stifle them. One of the first instances that sparked it all began six decades ago, with one letter. On March 9, 1960, “An Appeal for Human Rights” was published as a full-page advertisement in multiple newspapers across the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, including the Atlanta Constitution. The one-page list of demands was signed by six students attending the then-six AUC institutions: Atlanta University’s Willie Mays, Clark College’s James Felder, the International Theological Center’s Marion D. Bennett, Morehouse College’s Don Clarke, Morris Brown College’s Mary Ann Smith and Spelman College’s Roslyn Pope.
The movement started after three young male students, Lonnie King, Joseph Pierce, and Julian Bond, decided to put together their own movement in the AUC after being inspired by a similar one conducted by four students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University. This marked the dawn of a new movement that would contribute to the desegregation of public entities in Atlanta and inspire AUC students to join.
I must beg the question, “What about the women?” What was their story, and how did they help lay the foundation for the next generation to come?
DR. GEORGIANNE THOMAS
CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY ADJUNCT PROFESSOR; SPELMAN COLLEGE ‘64 GRADUATE
Dr. Georgianne Thomas is an early foot soldier and a 1964 graduate of Spelman College. She is also a filmmaker who produced the award-winning documentary “Foot Soldiers: Class of 1964.” Currently, she is a professor at Clark Atlanta University. Thomas also wanted me to make a note to tell people to tune into her self-titled YouTube channel for her all-new “Slice of Life’’ series, where she sports fun glasses and gives advice to her viewers.The woman knows AUC activism like the back of her hand.
Rice: How did you get involved in the Atlanta Student Movement?
Thomas: Dr. Herschelle Sullivan Challenor, the senior class president, came to talk to us about the movement. They had done something in March of that year, but in March of that year, we were in high school. So we’re now 15, 16 and 17 years old down here in school, trying to be college students. You brought us an issue. It was a real issue for the Northerners—the 10 of us that were from the North. One person had come from Germany because her parents were in the service. So she was really confused. And we were just confused by all of that. “White people don’t talk to you?” “You don’t have white friends?” “You all don’t know white people?” It wasn’t like that with me. It didn’t make sense to me. So I joined up with the rest of the women at Spelman. There were a number of us who joined the movement just based on the ludicrous nature of what they were presenting to us. I’m the same Georgianne and I was in school with the same white people. What happened when I got here?
Then I found out that I wasn’t the “white girl” that I was when I arrived; I became colored—Negro, the N-word, Black—all kinds of things that I wasn’t before. When I went home, I was gonna be across the street with some white people. I was gonna be with some more white people. My tennis partner was a white person. The people I bowled with were white, and now these white people hated me.
So I had to do something just to figure out what was going on. My parents didn’t send me to Spelman to do that. And they did protest a little about me doing it. They didn’t want anything to happen to me because I was so naive about it all. I followed them. And I was naive; I followed the Atlanta Student Movement people wherever they had to go. I just believed in what they had to say.
Rice: What was your experience like as a young woman in the movement?
Thomas: [The men] first went to women immediately to get some help. They went to Dr. Roslyn Pope, because she wrote the manifesto. She actually wrote it, although she put other people’s names there. It was Roslyn who wrote it. So, I want to make sure that it’s clear that they went to Roslyn and Dr. Herschelle Sullivan Challenor. I didn’t follow Lonnie King. I didn’t follow Charles Black. The women followed Herschelle.
Rice: Did you ever have fear? If so, how did you manage it?
Thomas: What was the fear? I didn’t know. I was sheltered. So, I hadn’t seen any dogs or anybody hanging anybody or lynching. There was never a discussion of being shot or something that was gonna happen to me because of the color of my skin. That was never an issue. We’ve had 400 years of slavery. Right? Can you imagine 400 years of enslaved people? You grow and die, and you don’t ever think about it. That’s how much fear is put into us. When they start talking about how we want to “Make America Great Again,” they want to make it where you are a subject. “You are our subjects. And if you don’t do what we say, we have the right to exterminate you.” The real issue is that people want us to be exterminated. Period. That is hard to say to a young person—not to be afraid. I don’t know if I can tell them not to be afraid because I have a certain amount of fear—not fear, but a certain amount of pause that I have for myself. Like, what is my escape route? And what is it that we can do as a people? If we all held back money, would it make any difference? Is that something we can do collectively that will change people’s minds? To tell you the truth, Miss Rice, I don’t think I have an answer. I don’t have much faith in humanity right now. And I shouldn’t say that. But I gotta have more faith in God that I’m gonna be alright.
Rice: What skills do you hope the next generation has to help us reach collective liberation?
Thomas: I’m 100% in support of education, reading books, and knowing your history. You young people, to me, have done more for us senior people than we recognize or even say because you have stood up and said, “No, I’m not doing that; I’m my own person.” “This is who I am, and this is who I’m going to be.” I like y’all. You have made us better people.Rice: What was so unique about the positioning of the AUC at that time? How did it contribute to your activism?Thomas: Because everybody was friends, you know. We didn’t have this, “I go to Morehouse. You go to Spelman. You go to Clark,” attitude. We were students. In the AUC, there wasn’t a real separation. We were very connected; you just marched out because you were committed.
Rice: What do you think is so special about women in any movement?
Thomas: We’re maternal, right? And so, we think like mothers immediately, whether we have children or not. We think, “Oh, wait, let me see what I need to do.” It’s like you get that as a baby. As a little girl, what was the first thing they put in your hand? A doll, a cooking thing, a vacuum cleaner thing that rolls around and a pocketbook. The child is not even crawling hardly. We’re maternal from birth to death.We’re gonna automatically think, “Well how can I solve that?” Because it’s just internalized. We are who we are. You can see five women with no children. They see a baby and something happening; they’re going to run to the baby in a minute and figure out what to do—and they never had a baby. Because it’s in our DNA. From the first time we stick a doll in a little girl’s arms.
Rice: Do you think we get our due praise?
Thomas: As Black women, never. A white woman came up with the idea that they had broken the glass ceiling. We didn’t have a ceiling. Or we already broke a ceiling, but nobody recognized that we had broken it. Think about all the Black women who have never been honored for the things that we’ve done.
Rice: What advice do you have for the new generation of women activists?
Thomas: Boycott. That’s not a word white people want to hear. You need to have a plan that you know is going to work, and it must be a solid plan. They decided in Montgomery that “you could have your bus. We will be at work, but we’re not going on the bus.” They got together, got the jitneys together and got people’s cars together. You need to go back to the basics. Pull back, commit yourself and hold back the money. They killed Dr. King because of the money he was gonna stop from flowing. Now, we asked for the wrong things. Maybe because we thought that what we were doing was going to change the world. It did change the world—but we left out a couple of steps, like the economic world, that we left out the most. We did not look at the money to see if we could figure out how to stop it. That’s all we have to do. We are worth trillions of dollars. We can combine silence with a pullback. Also, because people are more violent, I would say that my recommendation would be to figure out how to protest in a manner that is not antagonistic because there’s no regard for you anymore. We’re back to Jim Crow without the title. Nobody studied how we did it. It was quiet.They all had a specific dress code. Marilyn Price was walking behind Dr. King with heels on in a bad suit and stockings and whatnot. We had a way of looking. I know nowadays you’re saying, “Well, you know we got to run,” but it’s an approach that would make them look worse. You understand? Keep in mind that they will kill you. The middle thought is that antagonizing the police and throwing things at them is not the way to do it. I don’t think that you’d have to go back to silence the way we did—but it worked apparently. You have to be strategic. There’s a book called “The Art of War.” Have some study sessions. I said we didn’t march until we went to class. Y’all don’t have no classes; y’all are just like, “Come on, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna.” Yeah, and that’s why you are getting your butt kicked. That’s why you’re not winning, because you’re using the wrong parts of your body. This [pointing to her brain] is what you use. It wins every time.
Without the help of our foremothers, the young activists of today would have no roadmap. Gen-Z is having to get creative and lean into their lived experiences to create radical change in the face of today’s unprecedented issues like abortion bans and crackdowns on students’ right to protest. This is a generation of young women who are moving to the beat of their own drum and are not confined to the status quo. The new generation of AUC activists is coming in with a bang and not backing down for anyone. Now, this is an ode to them and the work that they tirelessly put in to help liberate others.

ROKIYAH DARBO
JUNIOR BIOLOGY MAJOR , SPELMAN COLLEGE
“Historically, Black women are always at the forefront of these [movements]. We just have it in us. Like, I don’t know what it is. We’re ready to do so much for people. It’s definitely eye opening. I’ll say that. I grew up in Africa, West Africa, Gambia, and I moved here with my family at the age of six.
Then my family moved, and I was around a lot of white people. It was a big change again.
I remember when the Black Lives Matter movement started, I would speak up on it. People in my high school, they just, they were so weird. I remember I got added into close friends [on social media] on purpose, where they would basically say the N-word. This one guy, Jake, he went on his story; he posted, “Oh, I’m so happy I don’t have to see another N-word.”
He said every word you could think of, every slur that you can possibly think of towards Black people—he said it all, just all of it.
Then his friends are making it seem like it’s the most normal thing ever, to the point where they’re like, “Oh, we can say that we created that word, we’re allowed to say it.” So, I started speaking up a lot, even though no one else was speaking up as much or even siding with me. I still stood firm in my beliefs. Yes, I canceled him. I’ll do it again.
Resistance is justified when people are occupied.
Around that time is when I really started to research more about things happening internationally. That’s when I learned more about what’s happening in Palestine. So, then I told my class, I was like, “I don’t know if y’all know what’s going on. Palestinians every day, their entire life is being dictated by the Israeli government. We need to start advocating for them.” I simply stated, “I’m pro-Palestinian today, tomorrow and forever.”
There was this girl who, in the 11th grade, she started going around saying that I’m anti-Semitic, because I’m pro-Palestinian. So, then I confronted her.
I was like, well, “if you want to use that same logic, you do realize majority of Palestinians are Muslim. So, would that make you Islamophobic? Because you’re okay with Muslims being killed. You’re okay with Muslims being harmed. You’re okay with Muslims having no control over their life.”
I remember a teacher came to mediate it or whatever. But she never stopped. So, my entire senior year, I was kind of alone. Coming into college, it opened doors of meeting other people and other people who also care for this cause.
The college has kind of allowed me to speak up more [and] bounce back with my peers. Thankfully, I’m in a place where there’s a lot of other intellectual people who are willing to do their own research and see that this is something that’s a human issue. Even last semester, when everything started coming out with Gaza, it put me in a really, really dark place.
I remember for weeks, I wasn’t eating on time. I would stay up scrolling and trying to absorb as much information as I could. Just being witness to everything that was happening. I just, I couldn’t even leave my room; to be honest, it got to the point where my grades were not where I wanted them to be.
I still kept going, but it does take a lot [out of] someone mentally. And that’s why I emphasize having a really strong support system. Because now it feels like, you know, I don’t have to do everything. And I’m starting to learn that as long as you’re working towards a goal. Activism in the AUC, to me, is building lifelong relationships, because it never stops. There are always going to be people who are going to need us to advocate for them. So, I’ve definitely built lifelong friendships. And I plan on making more. Within the AUC, I definitely feel like we do need more people speaking out—we need more people showing up.
Even last week, we had a meeting with students that are at a school called Birzeit University in Jerusalem. We got a one on one with them and got to ask them, you know, “What’s your experience like as a student there?” They kept telling us their everyday school life is interrupted because their schools are getting raided by Israel.
Schools have to be paused. Students are being killed. All the schools in Gaza are inoperable. It’s not okay. It’s not normal.
And the silence is so complicit because we have this privilege of being here. We have this privilege of being safe. We have this privilege of, you know, being protected, going to bed at night, being safe, and whatnot.
These people are constantly hearing sirens and planes, and that psychological war fare is so dangerous. We have the privilege of turning our phones off. The least we can do is speak up on it.
And it does matter because history is going to be how the white man portrays it. But we get to play a role in that. You get to look back and be like, yeah, I was there fighting for them.
I’m still fighting for them. But I hope that by that time, Palestine will be free. I pray the Congo will be free, Haiti, Sudan—all of these genocides that we play a part in.”
—As told to India Rice

ALIVIA DUNCAN
‘22 GRADUATE | CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY
“I can’t tell if my grandma was continuing this journey of exposing me to what it means to be a Black woman or if she was, basically, giving me the tools to go fight when the time comes.
When Ahmaud Arbery was murdered on my birthday, I felt a lot, but I didn’t feel like I could do anything at that time. It was also COVID, and no one was talking about him. Then, once George Floyd was murdered, it was just like, I’m fed up. We were beefing with the school at the time over sexual assault, and they were contacting me based on social media posts. So, everything was just very heightened. But it was just a moment of, “What do I have to lose?” People are literally dying, and girls are being assaulted. It’s bigger than me.
I hit up my homegirl, and I was like, “I really want to do protest.” And she was like, “I’ll do it with you.” I was like, “Okay, let’s call it ‘HBCUs for Black Lives.’ Let’s make this a HBCU thing because I haven’t seen any HBCU movements. Let’s bring this home to the AUC.” Then I got contacted by Jauan Durbin—he was the former Mr. Spelman and a whole bunch of other stuff. He believed he could help us leverage this, and I was like, “I don’t think I really need help with that.” But I’m glad I did take his help because I understood that we had to come up with strategies before having a protest—because it wasn’t just a protest.
I remember getting phone calls from advisers telling me to delete my stuff. I got phone calls from the AUC’s chiefs of police and their other departments about calming things down. I think all sorts of people were trying to manipulate me into not doing anything that I was trying to do, which later escalated everything.
I’m a womanist. This is who I am, not what I am.
So, the three of us got together. We made a flyer and posted it immediately. People were knocking on my door because I lived right next to campus in one of the student houses. They were calling me, and my name wasn’t even on the flyer. But everyone knew me. They were all contacting me from all three of the schools. Morris Brown was talking about “Delete this, you can’t do this here.” They were threatening to arrest us or do whatever if we trespassed because Clark was already under attack. Bricks were put on the corners of all the HBCUs, trying to incite someone to come in and throw them at our dorms. I then had to work with public safety, which I got a whole bunch of flack about because, “Why are you working with the cops?” But they were literally like, “If you do this on campus, we will literally have to arrest all of you, and this is not something we can allow.” We ended up working together.
We were thinking it was going to be 30 people. We ended up moving it to Cleopas R. Johnson Park, and we were the first group to do a protest there. By the time we got there, they were like, “We’re gonna work something out with the City of Atlanta so that we can guide you there, so at least the students were safe. Once you get downtown, it’s an agreement that y’all are on your own.” Thousands of people just kept showing up like hundreds, by hundreds, by hundreds, by hundreds. Chief Williams explained that they were not going to be able to manage all the pepople on the sidewalk. And that if we were walking in the street, the City of Atlanta can now threaten to arrest us, and that’s out of their jurisdiction. I’m just like, “I don’t really care.”
So, we did the protest. It was crazy. Crazy good. It was one of the largest organized actions since MLK and the Atlanta Student Movement. So that was crazy power, or whatever I was feeling inside. But it was honestly just like a moment of organizing people. And at the time, it wasn’t really a strategy. We weren’t necessarily trying to get anything; it was just showing that this is what happens when we come together. We got a lot of people’s attentions with that, and it inspired a whole bunch of people across the country to use the term HBCUs for Black Lives and start going out and doing stuff.
I was accepted to 32 colleges and universities. I chose Clark merely because they let their students be themselves. Out of all the schools in Atlanta and the AUC, they allow students to be themselves in every single way. From fashion shows to homecoming and throughout the year, they embrace that. And if the university doesn’t, your advisors and professors do—especially in Mass Media Arts. So that’s one thing I appreciate. When it comes to activism, obviously, when we do more radical things, that may not be the most acceptable thing, and that’s why it’s radical. The classes that I had in my first year at Clark—activism was all through it. You are learning how to be your own person, knowing where you come from, knowing what you stand for, and knowing what that means to you. That was in my English class, my math class, and my science class—these were the Blackest professors I had ever met. Everything that they were teach ing was just about finding yourself and finding what you want and what you stand for. I think, unconsciously, it’s woven into our culture. That’s why the AUC is so rare, and I absolutely love it.
I just want to continue to help people. I’m not an activist. I’m a womanist. This is who I am, not what I am. I hope that I continue to go down that path. I think students overthink things. I think this notion of “Oh, I don’t think Clark would allow that” or like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know, because Clark’s gonna do this, Clark’s gonna do that.” And did they try to do it? Yes. But the point was that, ultimately, they want to support you. They just have to find a way to do it in a way that makes sense for them. Until we had the fire in us or really felt like we were bad enough to do it, it wasn’t going to get done. No one was going to do it.
I just really hope students will stand up more and be willing to lose something. I’m not disappointed, but it’s really frustrating. Because everyone is just like, “Oh, it doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect me.” I wasn’t affected by anything. We did the housing protests. I was just sleeping outside for fun at that point. Like, none of those things affected me. But it wasn’t about me. And even if it was, that was more than enough reason to get up and do something.”
—As told to India Rice

ZOE BAMBARA
‘24 GRADUATE, MORRIS BROWN COLLEGE
My activism started literally as I was able to talk. I grew up in the Women’s Center at Spelman. My grandmother, Toni Cade Bambara, was a professor there, and she passed away before I was born. Spelman has a biannual event dedicated to my grandmother and her organizing work. My grandmother wanted to teach a course at Spelman that wasn’t approved, so she taught that course at her home for free, for students and community members. So, I grew up in the Women’s Center, learning about organizing, Black liberation and queer Black radical feminism.
I would say watching George Zimmerman’s trial started my activism journey. I was like 12 when that happened, or 11. I remember watching it with my family. When we heard the verdict, we were all just ... appalled. It kind of confused me because no one in my family was shocked, like how I was shocked. So, after the verdict, everything kind of clicked for me.
After elementary school, my mom moved us to Gwinnett. I grew up in a lot of predominantly white spaces. So even though she wouldn’t try to shield us from things, that’s kind of what happened. We still experienced a lot of microaggressions, but we didn’t talk about police brutality or things like that at such a young age. So, when we started having those uncomfortable conversations, it just shocked me. It was like a lightbulb moment. I went back to ask my mom about it, and that’s when she really started to tell me truly about racism.
I knew something was off, and my mom, she didn’t really know how to approach it when I was younger.
Even at school, I would make comments about my own hair, my skin—being really insecure about myself.
That’s always something I struggled with, my femininity, because I was always surrounded by white women who were skinny, had blonde hair and had blue eyes. I always felt like I was a monster because of the way that people viewed femininity up there. I thought that was what femininity looked like. And I’m always saying I’m a big body Benz, like I’m 5’8” and stacked. Knowing that I was different, I was going to be treated differently. Knowing that the systems are at play, they’re working exactly as they’re designed to. I can’t just sit here and continue to let it happen. I have to do something about it. I’m pretty passionate about everything. I know that nothing’s really separate and that there’s one common enemy. Or there’s like many heads on that snake, but it’s the same snake—it’s the same body.
I currently work at an abortion fund. Most of my work is heavily centered around reproductive justice. Not just legalizing abortion, but protecting abortion or abortion rights, and protecting bodily autonomy. I’m also very interested in Palestine and freeing Palestine. I’m really passionate about queer rights as well.
I think schools, especially HBCUs, are good for teaching people how to question things, but they don’t ever want you to question that institution, if that makes sense. I’ve been a part of Students for Justice in Palestine and things like that for the AUC. And like just seeing how Spelman and Morehouse kind of retaliates against their students when they’re protesting the school’s involvement with Cop City—you would think, coming from schools that pride themselves on being like staples, or the bridge, or the connector for young Black people getting into Black liberation and community, we don’t see a lot of support in that manner. For example, my brother goes to Morehouse. And he was in his group chat because one of his classmates took the Israeli flag down in the King Chapel. People were all in the chat saying, “You know, there’s a right way to protest,” and my brother would put in a group chat, “Asking permission to protest is like having a party.” You’re supposed to make niggas uncomfortable.
You should always question everyone. Including Black people.
It doesn’t stop with that. Spelman students are going to Starbucks and passing out tea right in front of Starbucks and telling people that Starbucks is funding a genocide. And just having AUC students go to [Senator Raphael] Warnock’s speeches at churches, standing up and leaving when you know Warnock is funding or approving a genocide [through his role in the U.S. Congress]. AUC students are not playing. Like, anytime [Atlanta Mayor Andre] Dickens comes to the school for any event, they show up there cussing his ass out.
I mean, I’m hopeful about the AUC. I always say that Gen Z, people don’t play. I’m really proud of young Black kids who are just, like, unafraid to question the institutions that are teaching them how to be adults. Of course, they’re going to teach you how to try to be a certain way, so you never question them. But you should always question everybody, including Black people. I feel like we have this thing now in our culture where it’s like ‘trust Black people and Black women.’ But there is a Black woman who is the vice president, who’s been approving this genocide for the past six months, who was locking niggas up in California. And then, when the UN was voting on a ceasefire, the United States had a Black woman who was the representative for the United States who voted no on a ceasefire. We have to question all institutions.
And of course, the AUC has such a great legacy. I said if I was ever gonna go to a college, I was gonna go to an HBCU. I’ve always said that be cause there’s still a lot to learn. And the legacy of HBCUs is beautiful. But we also have to know that Black capitalism is a thing. We also have to fight these institutions within our community, like transphobia, homophobia, capitalism, classism and all of that. But there’s a flipside: Multiple things can be true at once. My mom went to Howard. My grandmother taught at Spelman. My biological father went to Benedict, so HBCUs ran in my blood. I love my people down, but we always have to realize we have to question these institutions.
I think that my generation and generations coming up [are] taking the lead and kind of questioning what their elders are telling us. In the South, you grow up to not question your elders, don’t disrespect your elders. Now they’re like, f— that. I’m gonna question everything that’s being taught to me, as you should. I think that’s the legacy that we’re leaving behind.
I still want people to know that I’m still young. I graduate this year, I’m still young, not too much on me. I make mistakes, but I can still be problematic. I still have my moments. I’m still learning, and I’m still growing. But that’s the beauty of being an organizer and a cultural worker, knowing that you have to be very responsible with your organizing. I like to be held accountable for things I say that may be offensive. I think every student activist and organizer should also know that. Even though it’s okay to question your elders, we can still learn a lot from them-—a lot. So, know when to shut the hell up. I’m going through that now, where I know sometimes, I need to shut up. Knowing when to shut up and listen and knowing when to make noise and never shut up is very important.
—As told to India Rice
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