Fay Bellamy Powell
Fay Bellamy Powell | |
---|---|
Born | Fay D. Bellamy (1938-05-01)May 1, 1938 Clairton, Pennsylvania |
Died | January 5, 2013(2013-01-05) (aged 74) |
Occupation | Civil rights activist |
Known for | Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Institute of the Black World, National Anti-Klan Network, We Shall Overcome Fund |
Spouse | William Powell |
Fay D. Bellamy Powell (May 1, 1938 – January 5, 2013) was an African-American civil rights activist.
Known for her involvement in many organizations tracing the movements of the civil rights movement, Bellamy Powell began her career in the United States Air Force. After serving time with the Air Force, she accepted a position with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1965.
Bellamy Powell worked with the SNCC for many years, serving among her colleagues on the front lines of the civil rights movement. She later went on to serve on the staff of the Institute of the Black World, and help found the National Anti-Klan Network as well as the We Shall Overcome Fund.
After a long life as an influential activist, Fay D. Bellamy Powell died at the age of 74, on January 5, 2013.
Early years
Born in Clairton, Pennsylvania, Fay Bellamy grew up in a U.S. steel town in Western Pennsylvania. Her mother died when she was four years old, and her father served in the military. Thus, she was raised primarily by extended family: her mother's sisters and their families. Mary, Clara Fordham and Clyde, specifically, were her primary caregivers.[1]
Throughout her childhood, Bellamy attended Mount Olive Baptist church. While in attendance, she participated in junior choir and weekly prayer meetings. When she turned 16 years old, Bellamy decided that although she respected and appreciated the idea of religion, it was not hers.
Bellamy attended a neighborhood school, from kindergarten through high school all in the same town. It was not until she graduated from high school that Bellamy left her home town of Clairton.
After high school, Bellamy joined the United States Air Force. She received basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. From there, she went to McGuire Air Force Base, where she was stationed in New Jersey. Here, she served at Fort Dix, in the hospital area.
After her time in the Air Force, Bellamy moved all over the United States, from Florida to New York City to San Francisco, before settling down in Alabama.
Later years
In 1965, Bellamy Powell accepted a position working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She led the Selma, Alabama office of the SNCC for many years, serving in many positions. In Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC,[2] she wrote of her time in the SNCC, "I immediately became the entire office staff: the manager, the secretary, receptionist, and typist, as well as media specialist."[3]
An active leader, Bellamy Powell believed that she should do no less than what she asked of others, stating, "I was not looking for more danger, but I really believed that I shouldn’t do less than what I would ask others to do."[4] Thus, she often worked in field among her colleagues, participating in the civil rights organizing efforts in Greene County, Alabama.
A significant part of Bellamy Powell's life, the Student Nonviolent Cooperation Committee became one of the most important organizations in the struggle for black freedom. In fact, she was a part of the committee during the famous Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965. Although Bellamy Powell was a key member of many roles during her time with the SNCC, she is remembered for keeping the Black woman's perspective as a central part of the meetings, always using her knowledge and experience to advance the group in a healthy and influential fashion.
Following in the footsteps of her work with the SNCC, Bellamy Powell made many other prolific contributions to the civil rights movement. She later served on the staff of the Institute of the Black World,[5] a group of people committed to strengthening the ability of Black communities in the United States to thrive in society.
As a continuation of her involvement in the empowerment of African-Americans, Bellamy Powell played a key role in the foundation of multiple organizations: the National Anti-Klan Network, and the We Shall Overcome Fund.[6] The latter of which was founded to nurture grassroots efforts within African-American communities to combat injustice. Working with the Highlander Folk School, Bellamy Powell served on the board of the We Shall Overcome Fund at a social justice leadership and training center for more than 50 years.
Known among those close to her as more than just an activist, Bellamy Powell is remembered as an empowering photographer. A colleague at the Highlander Folk School, Kristi Coleman, recalls an encounter with one of her photographs, "It was what we are. I didn’t even know she was taking the picture. Her pictures were words."[3] With an avid clarity, her photographs, like her wisdom, carried her voice with them.
"You have to be open to hear other people," Bellamy told the Voices Across the Color Line Oral History Project by Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. "If you don’t, what you’re about is nothing. You’re about yourself, which is not what the movement is." Bellamy Powell lived her life for others, engaging with and empowering people throughout her life's work.[4]
Death and funeral
Civil rights and the entire social justice movement lost a great leader when Fay Bellamy Powell died on January 5, 2013. A memorial service was held a few days later through the Murray Brothers funeral home in Atlanta, Georgia.[7] Her calm demeanor and no-nonsense attitude gained her many followers, while her ability to listen gained her many friends. Her death is a loss felt by many, across decades of influence.[8]
See also
References
- ^ "The Civil Rights Revolution Remembered: SNCC 50 Years Later" Archived 2015-09-08 at the Wayback Machine. Voices from the Frontlines Radio. The Labor/Community Strategy Center, April 13, 2010. Web. July 19, 2013.
- ^ Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.University of Illinois Press. Ed. Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, Judy Richardson, and Betty Garman Robinson. N.p., 2010. Web. 19 July 2013.
- ^ a b "Fay Bellamy Powell Remembered." Highlander Research and Education Center. View From the Hill, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 July 2013.
- ^ a b "Fay Bellamy Powell Interview" Archived 2013-02-04 at the Wayback Machine. Atlanta History Center Album. Voices Across the Color Line Oral History Project, January 19, 2006. Web. July 19, 2013.
- ^ 21st Century; Research, Policy, Advocacy. Institute of the Black World, 2011. Web. July 19, 2013.
- ^ "We Shall Overcome Fund". Highlander Research and Education Center, 1966. Web. July 19, 2013.
- ^ "Mrs. Fay D. Bellamy-Powell". Murray Brothers Funeral Home. Atlanta, Georgia, January 5, 2013. Web. July 19, 2013.
- ^ "Fay Bellamy Powell, SNCC worker in Selma, Alabama, dead at 74" Archived 2013-08-26 at archive.today. The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, March 7, 2013. Web. July 19, 2013.
External links
- SNCC Digital Gateway: Fay Bellamy Powell, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
- v
- t
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(timeline)
groups
- Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
- Atlanta Student Movement
- Black Panther Party
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Committee for Freedom Now
- Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
- Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
- Council of Federated Organizations
- Dallas County Voters League
- Deacons for Defense and Justice
- Georgia Council on Human Relations
- Highlander Folk School
- Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
- Lowndes County Freedom Organization
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
- Montgomery Improvement Association
- NAACP
- Nashville Student Movement
- Nation of Islam
- Northern Student Movement
- National Council of Negro Women
- National Urban League
- Operation Breadbasket
- Regional Council of Negro Leadership
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Regional Council
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- The Freedom Singers
- United Auto Workers (UAW)
- Wednesdays in Mississippi
- Women's Political Council
- Ralph Abernathy
- Victoria Gray Adams
- Zev Aelony
- Mathew Ahmann
- Muhammad Ali
- William G. Anderson
- Gwendolyn Armstrong
- Arnold Aronson
- Ella Baker
- James Baldwin
- Marion Barry
- Daisy Bates
- Harry Belafonte
- James Bevel
- Claude Black
- Gloria Blackwell
- Randolph Blackwell
- Unita Blackwell
- Ezell Blair Jr.
- Joanne Bland
- Julian Bond
- Joseph E. Boone
- William Holmes Borders
- Amelia Boynton
- Bruce Boynton
- Raylawni Branch
- Stanley Branche
- Ruby Bridges
- Aurelia Browder
- H. Rap Brown
- Ralph Bunche
- Guy Carawan
- Stokely Carmichael
- Johnnie Carr
- James Chaney
- J. L. Chestnut
- Shirley Chisholm
- Colia Lafayette Clark
- Ramsey Clark
- Septima Clark
- Xernona Clayton
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Kathleen Cleaver
- Charles E. Cobb Jr.
- Annie Lee Cooper
- Dorothy Cotton
- Claudette Colvin
- Vernon Dahmer
- Jonathan Daniels
- Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Angela Davis
- Joseph DeLaine
- Dave Dennis
- Annie Devine
- Patricia Stephens Due
- Joseph Ellwanger
- Charles Evers
- Medgar Evers
- Myrlie Evers-Williams
- Chuck Fager
- James Farmer
- Walter Fauntroy
- James Forman
- Marie Foster
- Golden Frinks
- Andrew Goodman
- Robert Graetz
- Fred Gray
- Jack Greenberg
- Dick Gregory
- Lawrence Guyot
- Prathia Hall
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Fred Hampton
- William E. Harbour
- Vincent Harding
- Dorothy Height
- Audrey Faye Hendricks
- Lola Hendricks
- Aaron Henry
- Oliver Hill
- Donald L. Hollowell
- James Hood
- Myles Horton
- Zilphia Horton
- T. R. M. Howard
- Ruby Hurley
- Cecil Ivory
- Jesse Jackson
- Jimmie Lee Jackson
- Richie Jean Jackson
- T. J. Jemison
- Esau Jenkins
- Barbara Rose Johns
- Vernon Johns
- Frank Minis Johnson
- Clarence Jones
- J. Charles Jones
- Matthew Jones
- Vernon Jordan
- Tom Kahn
- Clyde Kennard
- A. D. King
- C.B. King
- Coretta Scott King
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Martin Luther King Sr.
- Bernard Lafayette
- James Lawson
- Bernard Lee
- Sanford R. Leigh
- Jim Letherer
- Stanley Levison
- John Lewis
- Viola Liuzzo
- Z. Alexander Looby
- Joseph Lowery
- Clara Luper
- Danny Lyon
- Malcolm X
- Mae Mallory
- Vivian Malone
- Bob Mants
- Thurgood Marshall
- Benjamin Mays
- Franklin McCain
- Charles McDew
- Ralph McGill
- Floyd McKissick
- Joseph McNeil
- James Meredith
- William Ming
- Jack Minnis
- Amzie Moore
- Cecil B. Moore
- Douglas E. Moore
- Harriette Moore
- Harry T. Moore
- Queen Mother Moore
- William Lewis Moore
- Irene Morgan
- Bob Moses
- William Moyer
- Elijah Muhammad
- Diane Nash
- Charles Neblett
- Huey P. Newton
- Edgar Nixon
- Jack O'Dell
- James Orange
- Rosa Parks
- James Peck
- Charles Person
- Homer Plessy
- Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
- Fay Bellamy Powell
- Rodney N. Powell
- Al Raby
- Lincoln Ragsdale
- A. Philip Randolph
- George Raymond
- George Raymond Jr.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon
- Cordell Reagon
- James Reeb
- Frederick D. Reese
- Walter Reuther
- Gloria Richardson
- David Richmond
- Bernice Robinson
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Angela Russell
- Bayard Rustin
- Bernie Sanders
- Michael Schwerner
- Bobby Seale
- Cleveland Sellers
- Charles Sherrod
- Alexander D. Shimkin
- Fred Shuttlesworth
- Modjeska Monteith Simkins
- Glenn E. Smiley
- A. Maceo Smith
- Kelly Miller Smith
- Mary Louise Smith
- Maxine Smith
- Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
- Charles Kenzie Steele
- Hank Thomas
- Dorothy Tillman
- A. P. Tureaud
- Hartman Turnbow
- Albert Turner
- C. T. Vivian
- Wyatt Tee Walker
- Hollis Watkins
- Walter Francis White
- Roy Wilkins
- Hosea Williams
- Kale Williams
- Robert F. Williams
- Andrew Young
- Whitney Young
- Sammy Younge Jr.
- Bob Zellner
- James Zwerg
songs
- "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
- "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
- "Kumbaya"
- "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
- "Oh, Freedom"
- "This Little Light of Mine"
- "We Shall Not Be Moved"
- "We Shall Overcome"
- "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
- Jim Crow laws
- Lynching in the United States
- Plessy v. Ferguson
- Buchanan v. Warley
- Hocutt v. Wilson
- Sweatt v. Painter
- Hernandez v. Texas
- Loving v. Virginia
- African-American women in the movement
- Jews in the civil rights movement
- Fifth Circuit Four
- 16th Street Baptist Church
- Kelly Ingram Park
- A.G. Gaston Motel
- Bethel Baptist Church
- Brown Chapel
- Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
- Holt Street Baptist Church
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- March on Washington Movement
- African-American churches attacked
- List of lynching victims in the United States
- Freedom Schools
- Freedom songs
- Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
- Voter Education Project
- 1960s counterculture
- African American founding fathers of the United States
- Eyes on the Prize
- In popular culture
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
- Civil Rights Memorial
- Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
- Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
- Freedom Rides Museum
- Freedom Riders National Monument
- King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
- National Civil Rights Museum
- National Voting Rights Museum
- St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
historians