“For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell. It’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”
—James Baldwin
I believe in reparations.
I believe black people in this country are owed a great debt for what we have gone through, and for what our children and grandchildren are continuing to go through. I’m still waiting for my forty acres and a mule. I’m waiting for the day when I’ll be able to live my life without seeing how much racism is still a part of our society. Lydia has two sons, Tananarive has a stepdaughter, and both Tananarive and Johnita plan to have children of their own, and I am honestly afraid for my grandchildren. I know there have been improvements in this country, but I also see that there is so much more left to do, and there seem to be fewer people willing to do the work. Really, there seem to be so few people who are aware of how much work is left to do, which is even more troubling to me.
I didn’t expect my children to have so many battles left to fight. When Johnita was much younger, I remember her agonizing to me one night, in tears because she didn’t think she would be able to accomplish the kinds of things John and I have accomplished. I told her she shouldn’t feel like she has to accomplish the same things. I never wanted my children to have to undergo the experiences John and I did, but at the same time I want their generation to understand that just because some of us appear to have made it over, that doesn’t mean the war is won. Too many people have been left behind. I wanted to be able to see this fight through to the end, but the older I get, the more I realize that those of us who were fighting in the 1960s will not live to see the victory we wanted. I think some activists realized that truth a long time ago, which is why life was so difficult for them to bear. But I haven’t given up.
Of course, there have been things along the way I didn’t expect. I have some friends I discuss my children with, and sometimes we laugh to ourselves, saying, “Well, we taught them that everybody was the same, but we didn’t expect them to believe it.” Johnita married a white man from Ireland who works in finance, Mark Willoughby; and Lydia married a white computer programmer she met when she was in law school, Jonathan Greisz. Tananarive’s husband, Steve, is black, but his first wife—his daughter Nicki’s mother—is white, too. As a result, our family is all colors of the rainbow, and I have other black friends from the Movement who are in a similar situation. That’s why we laugh sometimes, but in a good-natured way.
It’s just one of those things we never predicted, like I’m sure Mother never predicted I would come home with a white man, John B., and announce in 1960 that we were engaged, or that Priscilla would marry a Dutchman. I have to admit, I had hoped all my daughters would go to college and find black men to marry like I did, but I love my sons-in-law. They are good to my daughters, which is all I ask of them. And I know Johnita, Lydia, and Tananarive well enough to feel confident that they will teach their children who they are. My biggest concern with interracial marriages is when parents do not raise those children with any knowledge of their black heritage, either from ignorance or shame. As far as I’m concerned, those parents are sending those children into the world completely unprepared. From the time they were born, I have given Justin and Jordan, Lydia’s sons, children’s books with African and African-American folktales. I want to teach them the freedom songs, too, just like I taught my children. I look forward to the day when they will be old enough to read this book, to learn their family history. I want them to have pride in themselves. I want them to know where they have come from.
This country may look different on the surface than it did forty years ago, but I know better. They should be ready.
In all honesty, I never set out to write a book about the Due family. I am a very private person, and there are many people who have known me for years, even my own sister, who have not been privy to some of the incidents I disclosed in this book. I had to think long and hard about exposing myself this way, but in the end I decided I would do whatever it took to tell the stories of the people I knew. In telling our family’s story, I believed, I could also shed some light on the stories of other civil rights families. I had to go beyond myself to write something I thought would be beneficial to young people—older readers, too, but especially young people.
As I write this, I am sixty-two years old. I can barely believe it. When I go through my papers and see everything I’ve been through and everything my family has been through, it’s amazing to me. This country really has not made it easy for us to exist here. Now, I feel as if it’s flying in front of my eyes, all of the running around trying to right the wrongs in the community and country, being knocked down time and time again—and getting up. Whether we were knocked down physically or emotionally, we were knocked down, and it took its toll.
I have a half dozen different kinds of pills I have to take every single day. Even Mother used to tell me she didn’t have to take as many kinds of pills as I do. As I look at all of these bottles of pills, I remember the collective toll all of this has had on me. It really is amazing I have lived to be sixty-two. I think about Stokely Carmichael, who has already died. He was younger than I am! A lot of fallen soldiers died so young. The system is still set up so that blacks do not live as long as whites in this country, and it’s no wonder. Sometimes it’s enough to knock you down for good. But no one has knocked me down.
I was inducted into the Florida A&M University Gallery of Distinction in 1987 in recognition of my civil rights work, and John and I were named “Living Legends” by the university in 1997, commemorating its 101st birthday. In 1998, FAMU awarded me and John the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award. “Your alma mater is proud of the courage you displayed as a major force in the civil rights movement,” my plaque reads.
Those awards were all very gratifying, especially in light of the problems I had with FAMU’s administration as a young person, but I felt most excited when Tananarive established a scholarship at FAMU named for me and John in 1997. I feel it is so important for new generations of young people to learn about the events that have taken place on FAMU’s campus, as well as all over this country. Through the years, I have given civil rights presentations to thousands of people at schools, colleges, churches, and civic organizations, sharing our history. Although sometimes it brings back painful memories, I think it is very important to have role-playing exercises with the students, giving them an opportunity to go back to an earlier time. Our youth are an immeasurable resource, and I want to give them as much as I can.
My priorities will continue to be education, health care, and sharing our history with young people. I’ve always liked the words in the freedom song “We Are Soldiers in the Army”: My mother was a soldier / She had her hands on the gospel plow / One day she got old, she couldn’t fight anymore / She said, “I’ll stand here and fight anyhow.”
I’m going to stand and fight as long as I can.
In December 2001, I went to another funeral, for Miss Daisy Young, who lived to be seventy-five. Her service was held two days after Christmas at Fountain Chapel AME Church in Tallahassee, where we held some of our CORE meetings in the 1960s. The seats were filled with hundreds of mourners. As John and I walked into the church, the choir was singing the hymn “There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” which was very befitting because there have been few spirits as sweet, or as strong, as Miss Daisy O. Young’s.
I didn’t know if I would be able to make it through Miss Young’s funeral. I really didn’t. Miss Young died on December 15, 2001, while I was writing this book. She had worked at FAMU until 1991, when she retired as the assistant admissions director after 39 years.1 She died right before Christmas, which was already such a hard time for me, bringing back memories of the awful shock of Mother’s death on Christmas morning the year before. To make matters worse, Tananarive and I had been unable to find Miss Young for some time because she had left Tallahassee, and we finally tracked her down only a couple of weeks before she died. We discovered that she was bedridden and living in Miami with a sister-in-law, Mrs. Theresa Young Brunt. I told Mrs. Brunt that I was about to leave town for a family Christmas and Kwanzaa celebration upstate, but I would drive to visit after the first of the year. I wanted to let Miss Young know I had finally finished writing this book. Every time I saw Miss Young on my visits to Tallahassee over the years, she said to me, “Pat, when are you going to finish that book?” But she died before I had the chance. I tell you, people slip away from us so quickly.
When the choir began singing “Amazing Grace,” I squeezed John’s hand and tried to pull my emotions away from that service. It had been a very difficult month; not only had we just passed the anniversary of Mother’s death, but on December 14 I’d had to put my Great Dane, Samson, to sleep after he had been part of our family for almost nine years. I had also just been to another funeral in Miami right before Thanksgiving. Anna Price, a dear friend of mine, had lost her mother, and I broke down during that funeral. I didn’t want that to happen again, especially once John pointed out that my name was on the program to give civil rights remembrances about Miss Young. Many of the people at the service knew Miss Young from her untiring work in her community, her church, and at AME conferences. The presiding elder, Bishop A. J. Richardson of the XIX Episcopal District, was there, but I wanted to remind everyone how much she had meant to the Movement.
I guess I always want to make sure the stories are told. That gives me strength.
Henry Steele, the son of Rev. C. K. Steele, who went to jail with me in 1960 as a high school student, was also at the service. So was Mr. Edwin M. Thorpe, the registrar at FAMU who had been Miss Young’s boss, warning her in the 1960s that her job was in danger.
The room was also full of ghosts, in my mind. I could imagine Rev. Steele there in his bow tie. I could also imagine Richard Haley, my music professor, who had been so close to Miss Young during the jail-in and the theater demonstrations. I guess all of us were there in spirit.
Bishop Richardson set the tone by telling the mourners how FAMU’s president, Dr. Gore, called the meeting of his faculty and staff to warn them against activism in the 1960s, telling them they should either stay on the ship or get off the ship—a story I had heard many times. Dr. Gore’s hands were shaking so badly during that speech, the bishop said, that his voice could barely be heard over the noise of the trembling microphone.
When it was my turn to speak, John walked with me up to the podium to give me moral support. Forty years earlier, John had proposed to me—the first time, anyway—on the porch of Miss Young’s house on Pinellas Street. I wondered again: Where does the time go?
“You know, Miss Daisy O. Young might have been very small in stature, but she was a giant,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “All of us are standing on her shoulders. Without people like Miss Young, Tallahassee’s history might have been very different.”
So I told them what I knew. About how Miss Young wore many hats, working with the NAACP, CORE, the SCLC, and the Inter-Civic Council, among other organizations. How she assumed the risk so few others in her place were willing to. How dangerous those times were.
“Miss Young told me a story,” I said. “She told me how one night in the nineteen sixties she and Mr. Haley were alone in the CORE office on Floral Street when they heard a knock at the door very late. They were very concerned. That’s just how bad it was in those times. Mr. Haley told her, ‘Miss Young, you go in the back. If I don’t come out in five minutes, you get out of here.’ And when he went to the door, there were two white men who’d brought seven thousand dollars to get the arrested students out of jail.”
As I spoke, those mourners sat up straight, their faces glowing, their eyes wide open.
They listened. They heard.
After The Gathering civil rights reunion we hosted some years ago, Tananarive told me that, to her, many of the activists sounded like we felt hopeless, which she could not understand. She said we tend to look at how much remains to be done rather than what has already been accomplished. Well, Tananarive is wrong about that. Just because I can see all the work that remains does not mean that I feel hopeless. I am full of hope.
First of all, I am very proud of all three of my daughters, who have grown up to be their own people. They have always tended to judge themselves against me and John, but they are unique individuals with their own special lives. I can honestly say that there are ways in which they have surpassed me. And I am glad. That’s what any mother wants for her children.
This book is one thing that gives me hope, as well as other books that tell our history. I am very grateful to Tananarive for helping me document the story at last. I will always be active, but even at the age of sixty-two, there are ways in which I now believe I can discover what I really want to do with my life. That is a wonderful, wonderful feeling.
There are also some other young people who have demonstrated to me through their actions that the Movement is not dead the way so many people seem to think. People of my generation tend to say that the younger generation has a short memory, but that isn’t always true. I saw that for myself in January 2000, during a sit-in outside of Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s office in Tallahassee. I felt as if I had stepped back in time.
John and I heard that two young Florida legislators, Sen. Kendrick Meek from Miami and Rep. Anthony Hill of Jacksonville, had staged a sit-in at the capitol. I have known Kendrick’s mother, a former state senator and U.S. congresswoman named Carrie Meek, for years; Kendrick is a few years younger than Tananarive, and I remember him when he was only a little boy. Now a Florida senator himself, Meek and another lawmaker had refused to leave Lieutenant Governor Frank Brogan’s office when Governor Bush refused to meet with them on the question of affirmative action. (The two offices are in the same suite.) Under a plan called the “One Florida Initiative,” Governor Bush was pushing to do away with affirmative action in university admissions and the state’s hiring and contracts. Florida is only one of several states toppling affirmative action gains. Truly, the clock is turning back. I have been saying that for years.
As soon as I heard about the sit-in, I knew John and I had to be there. We dropped everything and made reservations to fly to Tallahassee from Miami. As usual, before I left, I called Tananarive in Washington to leave a detailed telephone message so she could tell the other girls where we were. Ever since my days in the Movement, I never travel anywhere without leaving word of my whereabouts. On Tananarive’s voice mail, I quickly explained what had happened with the two legislators. Tananarive still had the recording of the message nearly two years later, so it was preserved: “They sat all night in the office,” I said with both pride and indignation in my voice. “John and I are headed to Tallahassee on a 1:45 P.M. flight. I don’t know where we’re staying. I’ll get back to you all later. We are in a hurry. We’re on our way to Tallahassee for you, for Justin, and for all the people who need to be treated with dignity. These people are crazy. And if you watch the news, you’ll see Governor Bush said, ‘Get their asses out of there.’ Well, we’re going to take our asses up there.”
With that, we were on our way. When we arrived, the black cabbie who drove us from the airport was very enthusiastic. “Somebody better stand up and say something,” he said.
I could hardly believe the scene waiting for me and John when we arrived at the state capitol. A huge crowd had amassed in a lobby area, made up of local residents, activists, and students from Florida A&M University and local high schools. Some people were carrying picket signs, and protesters sang “We Shall Overcome.” A pack of reporters was also there to document it. There were so many people, we could hardly squeeze inside. Instead of being in Tallahassee in the year 2000, I felt as if I was back in Tallahassee in 1960 or 1963. I could feel a powerful, familiar charge in the air.
When we arrived, Sen. Meek and Rep. Hill were conducting a press conference. Another black legislator from Miami, Rep. James Bush, noticed that we had come. “John Due and Mrs. Patricia Due are here!” he said, waving us to the front of the crowd. “Mrs. Due has been to jail fighting for civil rights. Mrs. Due, come say a few words.”
I had not planned to make a speech, and I was tired from our sudden trip, but the crowd gave me energy. As I walked forward, people began to clap. I looked at their young, encouraging faces—so many of them looked like children—and I could hardly believe I had been their age when I took part in my first sit-in, when my life changed forever.
“I’m so happy to be here,” I said, “because I’m proud to see Senator Meek and Representative Hill carry on the second generation. I spent forty-nine days in jail in 1960 for sitting-in at a Woolworth lunch counter. You see I’m wearing these dark glasses. Well, it’s because a police officer hit me in the face with tear gas while I was taking part in a peaceful march from FAMU’s campus. As I look at you all today, I am so proud, and at the same time I can hardly believe we’re still here trying to fight for the same things. We’re still trying to fight for dignity as black people.”
Soon afterward, I was invited by U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, who was also in Tallahassee, to speak again at a meeting in a nearby upstairs conference room, which was also packed. Again, I told my story. I didn’t notice it at the time, but I was told later that Sen. Kendrick Meek was visibly emotionally affected and that Rep. Tony Hill was in tears as they heard me speak. I was nearly in tears myself, but not from sadness. Not from hopelessness. As I stood in that hot, crowded room of people of all ages who had faced arrest and discomfort for the sake of their beliefs and I told them about the history of our collective struggle, I felt absolutely free.
That feeling of liberation was multiplied many times over only two months later, on March 7, 2000, when Tallahassee was the site of the largest protest march in the state’s history.
The march was such a success because of the efforts of people throughout the state. John did his part, too. Weeks after the sit-in, John helped build a coalition between Monica Russo, president of the Service Employees International Union 1199 of Florida, and Miami-Dade NAACP chairman Leroy Thompson to sponsor a “Jobs with Justice” Task Force, supporting low-income workers to achieve a living wage and exercise their right to organize. Sen. Meek and Rep. Hill then asked Jobs with Justice to help them mobilize a statewide march on Tallahassee, in conjunction with the Florida State Conference of NAACP branches. John asked Dorothy Thompson of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to organize the twenty-three buses of marchers from Miami, and other leaders statewide worked to bring people to the state capital.
John and I drove to Tallahassee, spending the night in Tallahassee at Mary Lee Blount’s house with her and her mother, Mrs. Dorothy Jones, who had a cross burned in her yard in the 1960s after she gave me shelter in Quincy. Tuesday morning, John and I set out for a restaurant to meet our host for the march, Jeanette D. Wynn, the Florida president of AFSCME, AFL-CIO. Then, we joined the masses assembling on Apalachee Parkway for the uphill march to the state capitol building.
At any march, I’d learned from experience that you never know until the day of the event exactly how many people will turn out, but it was obvious to me right away that this march would be one to remember. The people came, and they kept coming. Some people had driven all night to get to Tallahassee by the time the march began. Buses came from Atlanta and all over the state. Lined up, the buses stretched for a mile. The streets were crowded with men, women, and families, and many people were wearing “March on Florida” T-shirts from vendors or carrying picket signs that read JEB CROW, or ONE FLORIDA—ONE TERM, or one FLORIDA CHEATS MY GRANDKIDS.2 Spurred by a sit-in started by only two young state legislators, protesters came in unprecedented thousands to march on the state capitol.
As is usually the case with large-scale demonstrations, there were conflicting reports on how many people attended the march; the NAACP estimated that there were 50,000 people, while the city’s estimate ranged between 9,000 and 11,000. But official numbers didn’t matter to me. All I know is that there were marchers everywhere I looked, in every direction. I felt as if I had been completely swallowed inside a sea of people in a way I had not been since the March on Washington in 1963. “This is like the Million Man March,” John said, excited. All of us had our different reasons for wanting to be there—and different histories that had brought us to that day—but we were all marching together.
John and I met up with Mrs. Vivian Kelly, who walked the entire march, despite being eighty years old. It was March, but it was warm, so I was worried about Mrs. Kelly. But she is still a real soldier, just like she was when she did voter registration in Quincy in the 1960s and had to outrun a farmer’s dogs. “I’m all right, Pat,” Mrs. Kelly kept saying when I asked how she was doing under the Tallahassee sun.
Rev. Jesse Jackson was there, as were SCLC president Martin Luther King III, national NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, activist Dick Gregory, U.S. congressmen, and many others. I also saw James Orange, another of the longtime SCLC activists, who had helped me carry Lydia during Florida’s Poor People’s March, when she took her first steps. I know there were many people in that crowd I had probably been arrested with in the 1960s, but whom I had never met.
That day, as we marched up Apalachee Parkway, I was literally surrounded by history. Jesse Jackson led his familiar chant: “I am somebody!” And just as I had thought as I basked in the fellowship of activists during the March on Washington, as John and I marched in Tallahassee that day, I thought to myself, “A job well done!”
“This is not about the swift,” Sen. Kendrick Meek said in his speech. “It’s about those willing to endure, to hold on for their children and their unborn children.”3
He was right. When we risked our lives in the 1960s to register blacks to vote, we did it because we believed—and I still believe—that voting can make a difference. Nothing happens overnight, but I believe leadership can emerge to create a brighter tomorrow for everyone. I have seen it happen time and again.
Rep. Anthony Hill and Sen. Kendrick Meek, for instance, did not stop trying to get their message heard with their sit-in or the march. They crossed back and forth across the entire state of Florida in eight months to help register more than 30,000 new voters, encouraging each person to bring five people with them to the polls. It was the most successful voter registration drive in state history.4
The whole world saw the result of their efforts.
In November 2000, as a result of Florida’s newly registered voters, the presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush was so close in Florida that a winner could not be determined right away. In a history-making moment, the world had to wait while lawyers argued about how to count the ballots in Florida. Although the United States Supreme Court stopped the recounts, our message had been heard loud and clear.
We are somebody.
We did not win our battle against One Florida. Governor Bush dismantled most aspects of affirmative action in Florida soon after the sit-in and the historic march on Tallahassee in 2000, but none of us had been there in vain. In our willingness to stand up for what we honestly believed was right, and to demand our right to be heard, we had won something no one could take from us: We gave each other the strength to fight another day.
To me, that’s what history is all about. Once you know what others have done, it helps you understand what you can do.
I originally wanted to call this book Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things, because that is the key. Experience has taught me a great secret I have spent most of my life trying to share with my children and anyone who will listen: History happens one person at a time.
Patricia Stephens, Mrs. Lottie Hamilton (mother of Patricia and Priscilla), and Priscilla Stephens. The Stephens sisters were on a national speaking tour after spending forty-nine days in jail for sitting-in at a Woolworth lunch counter in Tallahassee, Florida. Their mother accompanied them on the tour because they were minors. (Photo from The Philadelphia Tribune, May 24, 1960)
Priscilla Stephens, Walter Stephens, Lottie Hamilton (their mother, standing behind them), Patricia Stephens, their stepfather, Marion Hamilton, and, seated, their grandmother, Mrs. Alma E. Peterson (Mrs. Hamilton’s mother), posing in front of their home in Belle Glade, Florida, in Palm Beach County around 1955. (Due Family Collection)
Richard Allen Powell, the father of Lottie Hamilton, the parent who raised her. (Due Family Collection)
Patricia Stephens holding her favorite doll as she stands with her sister, Priscilla, and their mother, Mrs. Lottie Hamilton, in their yard in Belle Glade around 1950. Mrs. Hamilton went out of her way to get Negro dolls for her girls to make certain that they loved themselves. (Due Family Collection)
Priscilla Gwendolyn Stephens, Marion Hamilton (Daddy Marion), and Patricia Gloria Stephens in band uniforms in Belle Glade, where Daddy Marion was band director as well as the Social Studies teacher. He had once played with Lionel Hampton’s band. Priscilla played the flute and Patricia played the trumpet and bassoon. Patricia and Priscilla both raised money to buy the band uniforms. (Due Family Collection)
A 1959 photo of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) workshop at the Sir John Hotel in Miami’s Overtown, where Patricia and Priscilla Stephens first learned about CORE. Seated, left to right: Mrs. Shirley Zoloth, one of the people who persuaded Mrs. Hamilton to let Patricia and Priscilla participate; Patricia Stephens; person unknown; Vera Williams from St. Louis CORE; and Priscilla Stephens. Standing, left to right: Jim Dewar; Zev Aelony (interviewed for Freedom in the Family); person unknown; James T. McCain, a CORE field secretary from Sumter, S.C. who celebrated his ninety-seventh birthday in March 2002; and Gordon Carey, CORE field secretary. (Due Family Collection)
Patricia Stephens, a student at all-black Florida A&M University, talks to a student from all-white Florida State University while picketing for the right to eat at a lunch counter in December 1960 in Tallahassee, Florida. (Courtesy of the Florida State Archives)
Patricia Stephens looks on as Priscilla points at a police officer during the December 1960 demonstration. Officers had refused to respond to hecklers threatening students on the picket line. (Courtesy of the Florida State Archives)
FAMU students on March 12, 1960, as they marched downtown to protest the arrest of fellow FAMU students. On the far right, behind the sign that says “Give Us Back Our Students,” is William Larkins, incoming Student Government Association President at FAMU, and one of the students who later spent forty-nine days in jail for the February 20, 1960, arrest at Woolworth. Patricia Stephens had teargas thrown in her eyes during this march. (Courtesy of the Florida State Archives)
St. Augustine dentist and activist Dr. Robert Hayling speaks as John D. Due Jr. and other activists look on. Dr. Hayling was badly beaten by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. (Courtesy of the Florida State Archives)
Florida Theatre demonstration held after an injunction limited to eighteen the number of people allowed to picket. Patricia Stephens Due is shown in black dress and dark glasses; John D. Due’s head appears above the cap of the police officer. This demonstration resulted in six-month jail sentences for Patricia Stephens Due and Rubin Kenon, both FAMU student leaders. Under pressure from the Board of Control, FAMU president Dr. George W. Gore suspended them from school after their arrests. (Courtesy of the Florida State Archives)
During a protest against segregated lunch counters in December 1960, FAMU student Nathaniel Williams is pushed from the sidewalk to the street by racist white hoodlums while holding a picket sign that says “Join Us in Our Fight for Freedom.” To his left is Henry Marion Steele, a high school student who had been arrested earlier at a Woolworth lunch counter. White CORE member Barbara LaCombe climbs into her car to escape the melee. (Photographer: Stephen K. Beasley)
With money in his hand, FAMU student Benjamin Cowins tries to get service at a McCrory’s lunch counter on February 21, 1961. He looks toward the waitress, who is ignoring him. Two weeks later he was arrested at a Neisners lunch counter, which led to his spending thirty days in jail. (Photo from the collection of Benjamin Cowins)
Calvin Bess, who died under suspicious circumstances in 1967 while registering black voters in Mississippi. (Photo from the collection of Cherrye Bess Branch)
Letter inviting supporters to a luncheon to hear Patricia Stephens talk about her forty-nine days in jail. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt hosted the gathering for CORE to raise funds for activists in the South. Jackie Robinson and Daisy Bates, organizer of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Central High School for the 1957–58 school term, also attended. (Due Family Collection)
Patricia Stephens Due and John D. Due Jr. in April 1963, four months after they married. (Due Family Collection)
James and Lydia Stewart Graham, who raised John D. Due Jr. (Due Family Collection)
Lucille Graham Ransaw, John D. Due Jr.’s mother (Due Family Collection)
Rev. C. K. Steele congratulates John D. Due Jr. as he graduates from FAMU’s law school in April 1963. (Due Family Collection)
John D. Due Jr. speaks on FAMU’s campus to remind students of the consequences of their actions in demonstrations. Looking on, left to right: Doris Rutledge, who was arrested several times and later became a CORE field worker; Patricia Stephens Due; Rubin Kenon, suspended from FAMU for his activism; and others. (From the collection of Doris Rutledge Hart)
Tananarive’s dedication, 1966. Back row, left to right: Mrs. Susan Ausley, an activist at a time when it was dangerous for whites to be involved (she later became Johnita’s godmother); James and Lillian Shaw, activists and Tananarive’s godparents (James Shaw secretly gave bond money to Richard Haley and Daisy Young to get students out of jail); Rev. Grant A. Butler, the minister, and Mrs. Candaisy Blackshear; Horace Walter Stephens, Tananarive’s uncle; and Dr. Irene Johnson, one of Patricia Stephens Due’s FAMU professors. Front row, left to right: Wanda Crutcher, daughter of Rev. James and Addie Crutcher, Quincy, Florida, activists; Mrs. Dorothy C. Jones, one of Tananarive’s godparents and former elementary teacher of Patricia Stephens Due (Mrs. Jones allowed Patricia to live with her in the early sixties when it was very dangerous); John D. Due (holding Tananarive); Patricia Stephens Due; and Mrs. Addie Crutcher holding Stephen Crutcher. (Photographer: Stephen K. Beasley)
The 1971 Poor People’s March from Miami to Tallahassee, sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to demand prison reform, an improved welfare system, and greater political representation. Lydia and Johnita Due, daughters of Patricia and John Due, headed the march, being pushed in a double stroller by Rev. Ralph Abernathy, head of SCLC, and Miami community activist Mrs. Gladys Taylor, with Rev. James Orange and other SCLC staffers participating. Lydia learned to walk on this march. (Johnson of Miami)
Fourteen-year-old Tananarive Due speaks at the seventy-first NAACP convention in Miami Beach after winning a gold medal in the Afro-American Cultural, Technology, and Scientific Olympics, dubbed ACT-SO, in the area of Original Essay. ACT-SO, an Olympics of the mind, was the brainchild of Vernon Jarrett, a journalist from Chicago, who wanted black youth to compete in the academic arena as they do in the sports arena. (Lee’s Photos / Columbus Lee)
Johnita Due sits with lawmakers as she serves as a page in the Florida Legislature. Left to right: Rep. William “Bill” Flynn from Miami, a former restaurant owner who, in the 1960s, threatened blacks with bodily harm if they came in his restaurant, but repented later and asked the Dues to allow Johnita to stay with him and his wife in Tallahassee; Rep. Arnett Girardeau, Johnita’s sponsor, from Jacksonville (a dentist and member of the NAACP Executive Board, one of the first black senators in Florida); Johnita; Rep. Carrie Meek, who later became Florida’s first female senator and now sits in the U.S. House of Representatives; Rep. Joe Kershaw, from Miami, the first black in the Florida House since Reconstruction. (Due Family Collection)
Tananarive Due receives a gold medal in the ACT-SO essay competition at the 1980 NAACP Convention. Dr. Benjamin Mays, former president of Morehouse College, stands to her left; to her right is Lerone Bennett Jr., historian and author of Before the Mayflower. (Lee’s Photos / Columbus Lee)
The Due family meets presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in October 1976. Left to right: Tananarive; John D. Due Jr.; Patricia Stephens Due; and Rep. Gwendolyn Cherry, one of Florida’s first black representatives. Lydia Due sits in front of Carter and Johnita Due sits in front of Rep. Cherry. (President Carter later signed this photo.) (Johnson of Miami)
Judith Benninger Brown (left) of Gainesville, Florida, former student activist and CORE worker, feminist activist, civil rights lawyer, and one of Tananarive’s godparents, chats with Patricia Stephens Due. (Due Family Collection)
Tananarive Due presenting the John D. Due Jr. and Patricia Stephens Due Freedom Scholarship to FAMU. Dr. Frederick Humphries, on Tananarive’s left, looks on with Patricia Stephens Due and John Due. (Photographer: Keith Pope)
Patricia Stephens Due with Kwame Turé (Stokely Carmichael) and his mother, Mrs. Mabel Carmichael. (Due Family Collection)
Photo of Patricia Stephens Due that appeared in the Tallahassee Democrat surrounded by articles about her Civil Rights involvement. (Tallahassee Democrat, Mike Ewen)
Patricia Stephens Due raises her arms as she makes a point at the memorial service for Judy Benninger Brown in Gainesville, Florida, in June 1991. (Photographer: Gainesville Women’s Liberation/Pete Self)
The Gathering was a reunion of civil rights activists hosted in the home of Patricia Stephens Due and John D. Due Jr. in Miami, Florida, in 1997. First row, left to right: Miles McCray, Mrs. Athea Hayling, Doris Rutledge Hart, Patricia Stephens Due, Mrs. Lottie Hamilton Sears Houston, and Priscilla Stephens Kruize. Second row, left to right: Johnita Patricia Due, Jeff Greenup, Clarence Edwards, Ulysses Baety, John D. Due Jr., Dan Harmeling, Tananarive Priscilla Due, Mrs. Vivian Kelly, and Dr. Robert Hayling. (The Gathering is covered in detail in Chapter 24.) (Photographer: Lee A. Waters, Jr.)
October 15, 2000: The Due women at Johnita Due’s wedding. Left to right: Lydia (pregnant with Jordan, her second child); Johnita, the bride; Mrs. Lottie Sears Houston, the proud grandmother of the bride; Patricia Stephens Due, mother of the bride; and Tananarive Due, sister of the bride. This was the last group photo with Mrs. Lottie Sears Houston and her family. Mrs. Houston died at the age of eighty on December 25, 2000. (Lee’s Photos / Columbus Lee)
Due shares a moment with her grandchildren, left to right: Tananarive’s stepdaughter, Nicki, and Lydia’s sons, Justin and Jordan, during the Christmas and Kwaanza celebration in 2001. (Due Family Collection)
Tananarive Due and her mother’s Great Dane, Samson, await the beginning of the next interview in the home office and library of Patricia Stephens Due. (Due Family Collection)
At the ninety-seventh birthday celebration for James T. McCain in March 2002, the student leaders who became CORE field secretaries in the 1960s are reunited. Left to right: Patricia Stephens Due, Dave Dennis, Thomas Gaither, and Rudy Lombard. (Photo from the Due family collection)
The Due family portrait in January 2000. Front row, left to right: Lydia Due, John D. Due Jr., Patricia Stephens Due with grandson Justin Greisz, Mrs. Lottie Sears Houston (Patricia’s mother); back row, left to right: Jonathan Greisz, Lydia’s husband; Tananarive Due and her husband, Steven Barnes; and Johnita Patricia Due and Mark Willoughby (now her husband). (Photographer: Lee A. Waters, Jr.)