VALDA HARRIS MONTGOMERY

Rutha Harris

Rutha Harris ALBANY, GEORGIA

Rutha Harris played a unique role in the civil rights movement: using her vocal chords to fight for freedom. Harris is one of the original Freedom Singers (along with Bernice Johnson Reagon, Cordell Reagon and Charles Nesbett), an Albany, Georgia, singing group that existed to educate their people about the movement through song. The group performed at festivals across the country and at the White House. Their most notable performance was at the 1963 March on Washington, long considered a turning point in civil rights history.

Songs like the civil rights classic “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle” were in her powerful repertoire of protest music. Harris once said, “The reason I joined is that I thought I was free, and the reason I thought I was free is because my mother and father had sheltered us [Harris and her siblings] from all of that stuff. So I thought we were free, but we were not free.”

With this realization, Harris began singing for freedom, but her work didn’t end there. She was also active in voter registration drives, marches and mass meetings.

Harris is still doing the work important to Black freedom by leading oral history presentations that give firsthand accounts of her experiences during the Albany movement, using powerful narration and song performances to keep this incredible history alive.

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JIM STEWART’S VIOLIN

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

Stax Records, originally founded in Memphis in 1957 as Satellite Records, is perhaps one of the most influential soul and R&B record companies. One of its founders, Jim Stewart, had humble origins in the music industry as a country fiddle player and later decided to branch out into producing records. As a white man, his willingness to work with Black artists made him somewhat of an anomaly within the segregated South. However, this pioneering spirit resulted in great strides in Memphis and the music industry. Stax played a critical role in the creation and development of soul music and R&B, working with greats like Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Ike and Tina Turner, and James Brown to produce a long list of iconic songs. Stewart, who passed away in 2022 at the age of 92, dedicated the vintage violin he played when he first entered the music industry to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, where it’s now on display.

Joan Garner BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

Joan Garner is a tour guide at the West Baton Rouge Museum in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and her job is much deeper than a passionate pastime. Garner continues the impactful work of her father, John Garner, one of the Southern University student leaders who participated in Baton Rouge’s groundbreaking lunch counter sit-ins at Kress Department Store. John Garner was named in a lawsuit — Garner v. State of Louisiana — where the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that nonviolent civil rights protestors could not be prosecuted for disturbing the peace.

Today, Joan Garner is working tirelessly to right the wrongs of the past.

“For me, it’s about legacy,” she said. “It’s all about legacy.” And Garner doesn’t take her family’s legacy lightly. She wants it to be known the course of her father’s life changed forever, impacting his education and career path.

“The students were actually expelled from the school or suspended indefinitely, so in 2004 Southern University issued honorary degrees to these students,” she explained. “In my father’s case, he received an honorary law degree, but he didn’t ask for that. What he was actually asking for was an apology.” That apology still hasn’t come.

Joan Garner remains committed to telling the stories of the sit-ins and does so through lectures at the West Baton Rouge Museum. She’s also working on projects like preserving a historic cemetery for formerly enslaved people and restorative justice initiatives.

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Percy Green III ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

When Percy Green III climbed to the top of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch on July 14, 1964, he wasn’t concerned about making history. He was standing up for his people. But his decision to climb the arch to protest racial discrimination was monumental for the movement.

In the words of Green, “we were not concerned or conscious of making history. We were trying to be effective in our protest to expose racial discrimination on a federally funded project.” No Black people were employed as workers or contractors on the building of the Gateway Arch.

Green was a member of the city’s CORE (Committee on Racial Equality), a national civil rights organization, before leaving to form his group, ACTION (Action Council to Improve Opportunities for Negroes). He believed it was necessary to create a St. Louis-specific organization that focused on addressing issues and taking action against the inequalities in their communities.

Green’s militant approach was strategic, often organizing protests he knew would generate a buzz and bring media attention to the systemic racism Black people were facing. “We didn’t have the tools that protestors do today,” he said. “Social media is powerful. I wish I had it at the time, but during that time we did well with what we had. We had to play jujitsu with the news media.”