Ruby Robinson and SNCC (1961)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s March 12th. This day in 1961, an Atlanta woman by the name of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson joins the civil rights organization SNCC — and quickly starts to advocate for the role of women within the organization.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss Robinson’s life and work, and the gender and class dynamics among civil rights workers.

Sign up for our newsletter! We’ll be sending out links to all the stuff we recommended later this week.

Find out more at thisdaypod.com

This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.

If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com

Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod

Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergut.
0:17.0	This day, March 1961, an Atlanta area woman by the name of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, is attending her first meetings of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, also known as
0:21.9	Snick,
0:22.6	which we've discussed a few times on this show, I think.
0:24.9	But Smith Robinson is at that time,
0:27.0	a student at Spellman College, the HBCU in Atlanta,
0:30.2	and has been active for a few years in civil rights protests and now she is starting to link up with
0:35.3	SNCC which would be an incredibly important organization throughout the South particularly in these years
0:40.5	through the first half of the 1960s doing voter registration drives and
0:44.7	more throughout Georgia and other states in the South and Ruby Doris Smith Robinson
0:49.4	would play a big part in Snick. She would play a number of roles across their efforts and then she would also
0:54.3	over the years more and more start to speak out about the gender and racial dynamics
0:59.5	within the organization and across the civil rights movement as a whole.
1:04.8	So we've been wanting to talk about the life and work of this really remarkable person for
1:08.5	a while, but this is also a chance to talk about some of those dynamics around particularly gender within the movement.
1:15.0	So here to do that as always are Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of
1:19.8	Wesley.
1:20.8	Hello there.
1:21.8	Hello Jody.
1:22.4	Hey there. I tell you what the first thing that always strikes me when I see these stories
1:27.8	Just how young everyone is
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.