Guest For
Thursday January 29,
2009
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GUEST
COLIA LIDDELL LAFAYETTE CLARK
Pioneer
Civil Rights Activist
Coordinator:
"Power to The People"
coliaclark@aol.com
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The program can be viewed in its entirety by
clicking the you tube link below:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KuzXWP9xWfU
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More about: COLIA LIDDELL
LAFAYETTE CLARK
Colia L. Clark, a committed Pan Africanist has spent a life time
in activist work in the areas of civil rights, human rights, women’s rights,
workers rights and rights for the homeless and youth. Colia is a member of
the International Liaison Committee and sits on the board of directors of
the Capital region Solidarity Committee of New York.
Colia was born in rural Hinds county Mississippi and spent most of her
growing up years in the capital at Jackson, Mississippi. Each fall until her
late teens, Colia’s family migrated to the Mississippi Delta for cotton
picking season. She was born into a land owning clan, but her young father
and mother secured a share cropper contract with a local white farmer. The
family was an activist family with her father and maternal grandfather
working on projects with the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in the
neighboring County of Copiah. During the great flood of 1927, Colia father,
maternal grand father and great grandfather were conscripted along with all
black men within 150 miles of the flood to work on building of levees in the
Mississippi Delta. The household was regularly filled with stories, puns and
jokes on the horrors and good times of levee camp life and working
organizing tenant farmers. The violence associated with her father’s and
grand father’s work was in good part of the reason the family decided to
move to the City of Jackson. Colia was educated in the Jackson Mississippi
Public Schools, received her BA from Jackson State University, MA from State
University of New York at Albany where she also begun a doctors of Arts
program in humanistic studies.
Colia has just completed tenure as manager and partnership coordinator for
the Philadelphia Youth Network Youth Opportunity Centers. She has taught
college, worked as an award winning editor of the Jackson Mississippi
Advocate, managed youth centers, directed a noted parent advocacy agency and
served as a trainer in conflict resolution and mediation. Her work in civil
rights begun in home state of Mississippi where she served as special
assistant to Medgar W. Evers, Mississippi Field Secretary for NAACP and
organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) under the
direction of Bob (Robert Moses). In 1963, Colia and her first husband
Bernard Lafayette organized the Black Belt Alabama Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee Voter Education Project in Alabama with headquarters
at Selma. This project was the backbones of the Martin L. King, Jr. 1965
drive for the right to vote at Selma. Colia founded Mothers on the Move in
Chicago in 1965 working with poor Black Women in Housing Projects in Mayor
Richard J. Daley’s 1st ward. In Chicago Colia directed the 1st Ward Union to
End Slums Movement under the directorship of Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. She
organized and coordinated the Poor Women Against the Vietnam War March in
1967. Colia served as an award winning editor for the Jackson, Mississippi
Advocate newspaper, college teacher and Manager of the Social Justice Center
at Albany New York. Under Colia’s leadership the Social Justice center
housed the Amadu Diallo campaign for the trial of officers for the brutal
murder of this young African. Colia life time work has been primarily with
the young. She served as vice president of the African Student Association,
vice president of the NGO, American South African Peoples Friendship
Association, and president of the Urban Education Institute, Chairwoman of
Campus Action and member of the Board of Holding Own: A Fund for Women and
Coordinator for Bridge Builders of the Capital District.
Honors and Awards (Selected)
Received the Solidarity Committee of The Capital District of Upstate New
York International Solidarity Award for Labor Day, 2005, Citations and
Annual Day of commemoration in name of Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark
established, Niagara Falls Legislature And City Council, April, 2000; Hero
of the Year, Metroland Newspaper, Albany, New York 1999; NAACP WOMEN of
Distinction Award, 1995; Student Association (Albany State University)
Teacher of the Year 1991; MAP, NAACP and Albany State University Black
Alliance Teacher of Year and Community Service Award 1991; Green Prison
Black Cultural Center Volunteer Service Award, 1988; National Organization
of Women Albany Chapter Award 1986; Delta Sigma Theta State University of
New York at Albany Chapter, Woman of the Year 1985; SUNYA NAACP Award 1986,
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s James Meredith National Freedom
Award,1962
Colia has served
on numerous boards of directors and received a large number of citations and
awards recognizing her work. This August, 2005, she received the Solidarity
Committee International award for her work organizing for workers rights
internationally. Colia conducts workshops in conflict resolution and
mediation for elementary, secondary schools and college students, lectures
and speaks widely. She has performed scores of poetry recitals and One
Woman shows and three professional television acting credits. A folklorist
uses her drama to present one woman shows on Africana women’s biography.
She has her own consulting firm, NEFEROHU.
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Colia Liddell LaFayette Clark
NAACP, SCLC, 1959-70, Mississippi, Alabama
Current Residence:
PO Box 273
Glen Olden, PA 19036
Email:
shestarts@aol.com
Phone: 267-241-7092
Let me start by saying that these internet sites
expect well prepared statements on the spot. This is very much like the
fight for basic civil rights in the Southern USA in the 1950's and 60's. Be
ye therefore ready because you don't know what the white folk might bring.
Between 1959 and 1970, I spent pretty much full
time working on civil rights and human rights causes. The major work being
concentrated on the removal of those seemingly ancient symbols of
subordination that marked the southern terrain and the struggle for the
simple rights to vote.
My career started with NAACP at Tougaloo College
and move rapidly to special assistant to Medgar W. Evers, field secretary
for the NAACP. I am the founder and first president of the North Jackson
NAACP Youth Council which is now infamous for initiating the 1963 mass
movement at Jackson under the leadership and guidance of Medgar Evers and
our advisor, John Salter. Many other adult leaders of North Jackson were
involved in helping to shape the course and program of this small band of
students and youth. The North Jackson NAACP Youth Council needs a major
biography and a calling together of all the young men and women and the old
ones who made this organization the center point of a major struggle for
which most of the young people involved have not been given any credit.
Anyone interested please call me at 610-532-1817.
In June 1962, I resigned my job with the NAACP and
joined with Mississippi SNCC under the leadership of Robert P. Moses. We
worked in Jackson, Hattiesburg (Forest County), Sun Flower County, Greeville
on projects that were directed towards helping local Mississippians get
registered to vote. One has to know that it is near impossible to work in a
rural state under the feet of oppression and not work on related issues of
the peoples.
In November, 1962, I met and married my first love,
Bernard LaFayette, Jr., SNCC Field Secretary. In February, 1963 Bernard and
I moved to Selma AL, where he served as director of the SNCC Black Belt
Alabama Voter Project and I continued as SNCC field secretary. The project
was headquartered at Selma but we had responsibility for developing voter
registration and direct action projects in the seven Black Belt Counties.
While at Selma, I was appointed by James Forman, executive secretary of SNCC,
to assist with the Birmingham, Alabama Movement under the leadership of Dr.
Martin L. King. It was in Birmingham that I took one of the worst beatings
of my career in the civil rights struggle. Three fire houses assaulted me
for what seemed forever on May 8, 1963.
In 1964, I was privileged to be a part of the birth
of the Southern Organizing Committee at Nashville, Tennessee where Bernard
and I were attending school at Fisk and giving birth to our first son, James
Arthur. Nashville was the culminating point for the early years of civil
rights in the South. Beyond lie Chicago, New York and national politics. By
early 1973, I returned to my home state Mississippi and worked on a number
of other projects including the editorship of the Jackson, Mississippi
Advocate.
Today I recollect experiences of anti war, racism,
Diallo, reparations, workers rights and the battle to end the Africa debt
along with that of all of Central and South America. This work has taken me
into the international arena where I think the progressive forces and
especially the Black forces in the USA must centralize future struggles.
These struggles around issues of imperialism, colonization, capitalism,
racism, environmentalism, anti-woman, anti-youth, anti-age, anti-human
struggles must be internationalized as a part of the struggles of other
world groups and issues. It is important that the struggle of the African in
the USA be removed from domestic servitude to international leadership-human
at last.
I speak all over the place having just returned
from Algeria where I participated in a Parliamentary two day conference on
the "devastation of Africa its causes and dimensions, why and what can be
done about it."
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Thursday January
29, 2009
10:30 - 11:30 AM / (NYC Time)
Channel 34 of the Time/Warner & Channel 83of
the RCN
Cable Television Systems in Manhattan, New York.
The Program can now be viewed on the
internet at time of cable casting at
www.mnn.org
NOTE: You must adjust viewing to reflect NYC time
& click on channel 34 at site
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