Frank Sinatra, Other Anti-Racist Icons Who Were Down For Black Folks

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Black Americans have always led our own struggle for freedom and justice, but we couldn't do it alone. Standing beside leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass were white folks like legendary singer Frank Sinatra who used their voices and privilege to protests the unjust racism in the country. But what about all the other white allies whose names have been lost to history…?
We hardly remember the white abolitionists and civil rights leaders who in many cases became martyrs to the cause. So now, The Root is taking a closer look at the anti-racist white heroes who were just as down for civil rights as Black folks throughout history.
At age 18, Rev. Bruce Klunder knew he had to join the Civil Rights Movement, and by 26, he became a martyr for the cause. Klunder was one of several protesting the construction of a segregated school in Ohio. 'Even way back then, we realized that injustice was in the institutions—that it was systematic,' he said according to PBS. During the 1964 protest, he threw himself behind a bulldozer to prevent it from advancing. As the driver backed away from the side, he drove over the 26-year-old, killing him.
Before he became the musical icon we know today, Frank Sinatra would make trips to Harlem just to watch Black jazz musicians like Sammy Davis Jr. play. When a guard at Sinatra's show wouldn't let his Black jazz friend in, Sinatra didn't hesitate to rip up his contract and never play that venue again. In 1947, he said, 'We've got a hell of a way to go on this racial situation,' and for the rest of his career, he would use his voice and power as a white singer to advocate against discrimination.
Centuries before 'crashing out' became common slang, John Brown was demonstrating what the phrase meant to the fullest extent. Back in the 1850s, Brown famously gathered a group of other white men opposed to slavery and targeted and killed any pro-slavery person they could find. This went on for years until the climax at his failed raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, according to PBS. He was captured and executed. Despite his violent activism, Brown is remembered as one of the many white abolitionists who inspired slave revolts and pure change.
In 1963, William Lewis Moore, a white postal worker from Baltimore, set out on a one-man protest against racial injustice. His plan was to walk 600 miles from Chattanooga, Tenn. to Jackson, Miss. to hand the governor a hand written letter. Unfortunately, his plan was never completed as he was shot and killed halfway through his journey, according to PBS. His suspected killer, a Klu Klux Klan member named Floyd Simpson, was never charged. His murder remains unsolved.
The U.S. district judge knew the ultimate power of the courts during the Civil Rights Movement. That's why he ruled to open white primaries to Black voters during election season. Waring once said, 'The cancer of segregation will never be cured by the sedative of gradualism,' according to the Southern Oral History Program. He was shunned by white supremacists in his hometown of Charleston, S.C. This led Waring to move to New York City.
Born in 1924, Anne McCarty Braden was a journalist from Kentucky who used her privilege and career to advocate against racial injustices. Most famously, she and her husband helped a Black couple buy a home in an all-white neighborhood in Louisville in 1954, according to the Los Angeles Times. She and her husband were consequently put on trial for sedition– inciting a riot– and they were banned from jobs and threatened after the fact. She worked closely with Ella Baker, Rosa Parks and she was even mentioned in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail.'
Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister, understood his calling and used his voice to amply the movement. After witnessing the violent police attacks to Black protestors in Selma, Ala., Reeb traveled to the city to do his part, just as Dr. King urged folks. But when he got there, he would unfortunately meet his end in 1965 after he was targeted and killed by a group of white supremacists. 'James Reeb symbolizes the forces of good will in our nation,' Dr. King said after his death, according to Stanford University. 'He demonstrated the conscience of the nation…He was a witness to the truth that men of different races and classes might live, eat, and work together as brothers.' Reeb's killers were acquitted of his murder that same year.
Edgar Chandler worked closely with Dr. King in the 1960s. He was a Navy Chaplain, congregational minister and the director of the Church Federation of Greater Chicago, according to The New York Times. He later hired Jesse Jackson at the Church Federation of Greater Chicago and the two men became friends. Jackson said Chandler 'really helped to bring me into the civil rights movement…He helped to hire me when I had no money, and helped sustain my family.'
When Jim Zwerg was sent to Fisk University for a one-month exchange student program, his life was changed forever. There, he met a young John Lewis, who would become one of the most prominent civil rights leaders in history, according to the High Museum of Art. Zwerg soon became a freedom rider until a near death attack put him in a coma. Pictures of him after the attack soon flooded the media, making him a notable face for the movement.
Born the same month the Civil War ended, Mary White Ovington was a journalist and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Ovington became involved with the movement following hearing Frederick Douglass speak in 1890. After a race riot in Illinois, Ovington helped organize a meeting between Black and white people. This would lay the foundation for the modern day NAACP, according to the organization's website.
Sally Rowley was always a free spirit. After taking an interest in Amelia Earhart, she soon learned how to fly planes. Rowley eventually moved to New York, where she joined the freedom riders. On one of her trips to the South in 1961, she was arrested. Rowley served time in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. She died of COVID in 2020, The New York Times reported.
Margaret Leonard wanted folks to know that all white people in the South weren't 'evil,' as she said. In the 1960s, she began attending CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) meetings and participating in sit-ins for civil rights. Most notably, she was a Freedom Rider. 'At the CORE meetings they said, 'If somebody comes to hit you, protect your head.' But then in the Freedom Rides, they got real serious. We would go and spend some hours in a church basement being told what to do when they try to kill you,' she said according to sixtiessurvivors.org
Viola Liuzzo had a history of activism, but it wasn't until 1965 when she would officially join the Civil Rights Movement. The housewife and mother of five traveled from her home in Detroit to Selma to help with ongoing efforts after Bloody Sunday in 1965. Liuzzo marched in the Selma to Montgomery demonstration across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, according to the National Park Service. While driving back with fellow activists to the airport, she was shot and killed by Klan members ate age 39.
Haunted by his own experience under Adolf Hitler, Joachim Prinz empathized with the message of the Civil Rights Movement. He represented the Jewish community, helping organize the 1963 March on Washington. He's most famous for being the speaker before MLK's 'I Have a Dream' speech and after gospel singer Mahalia Jackson's performance. He said it was his duty to join the efforts because 'the most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence,' according to the National Park Service.
Best known for forming the first freedmen's school for formerly enslaved people, Laura Towne spent her career dedicated to ending slavery. She was raised in Philadelphia, where abolitionist teachings were common. This led Towne to volunteer when the Union captured Port Royal in South Carolina. Eventually, she joined forced with her Quaker friend named Ellen Murray and founded the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, the first freedmen's school in the country, according to the website.