I'd interviewed Dandridge twice before, once for a joint project sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies and the University of Pennsylvania on the 40th anniversary of the release of the Kerner Commission Report and once for a column in The Sun. There was no way I was going to miss Dandridge receiving her honorary degree. So there I was at Washington College on a snowy winter afternoon, listening as Dandridge told a roomful of students about her role as a civil rights activist.
Someone asked her about a famous photo that involved her in a confrontational pose with a Maryland National Guardsman. Why, the questioner wanted to know, did you do that?
"Do what?" I wondered. What was this picture, and why hadn't I seen it? And where could I see it?
Later in the afternoon, in the hall where the convocation ceremony was held, up walked Smith, as if in answer to a wish or a prayer. He showed me an advance copy of the book, and there it was on the cover: the photo. Dandridge, then Gloria Richardson, with an angry look on her face and with her left hand on the barrel of a National Guardsman's rifle.
"Fraser," I asked Smith, "did she actually shove that bayonet aside and walk past that National Guardsman?" Oh, believe me, this photo is classic, and the expression on Dandridge's face says it all, which was basically, "Get that damn rifle the hell out of my way!"
Smith writes about Dandridge in the book, of course, but other Marylanders important to the civil rights movement are in there. A. Robert Kaufman, the longtime activist and Trotskyite who was involved in civil rights before civil rights were popular, will be happy to know he's in the book. So is Chester Wickwire, the retired chaplain at the Johns Hopkins University.
Marc Steiner's activism in the Cambridge protests is covered. And of course there are names like Lillie M. Jackson, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Clarence Mitchell Jr., Parren Mitchell and the famous Goon Squad, a group of black ministers in Baltimore who forced the white power structure to grant civil rights concessions.
It's a darned good book by a darned good writer. Those of you who love fine writing and history can't afford to pass on Here Lies Jim Crow.
greg.kane@baltsun.com
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