32 Facts About Bob Zellner

John Robert Zellner was born on April 5,1939 and is an American civil rights activist.

Bob Zellner graduated from Huntingdon College in 1961 and that year became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as its first white field secretary.

Bob Zellner was involved in numerous civil rights efforts, including nonviolence workshops at Talladega College, protests for integration in Danville, Virginia, and organizing Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1964.

Bob Zellner investigated the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner that summer.

Bob Zellner was arrested and severely beaten for his activism several times.

Bob Zellner left SNCC in 1966 but continued his civil rights activism.

Bob Zellner later taught the history of the civil rights movement at Long Island University and published a memoir of his activism that was adapted into the 2020 film Son of the South, with Lucas Till portraying him.

Bob Zellner was arrested as recently as 2013, for protesting a North Carolina voter ID law.

Bob Zellner was named after his godfather and the officiant at his parents' wedding, Bob Jones Sr.

Bob Zellner's relatives were involved in the Ku Klux Klan and his father and grandfather were members.

Bob Zellner's father organized for the white supremacist group but eventually left the Klan after supporting Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe during World War II.

Bob Zellner attended Huntingdon College, which was at the time an all-white school.

Bob Zellner graduated from Huntingdon with a degree in psychology and sociology later that year.

Bob Zellner later studied for a summer at the Highlander Folk School and two years at Brandeis University but did not graduate.

Bob Zellner was contacted by Anne Braden and soon hired to "conduct outreach to whites", becoming a formal volunteer on September 11,1961.

Bob Zellner was SNCC's first and, for the first year he worked, only white field secretary.

Bob Zellner was severely beaten by white men after protesting the murder of Herbert Lee, as well as the expulsion of Brenda Travis and Ike Lewis from Burglund High School.

Bob Zellner was briefly involved in running a high school for students who had dropped out of Burglund in protest.

Bob Zellner was arrested on December 10,1961, during the Albany Movement when he sat in an integrated group on a train.

Bob Zellner was arrested again in January 1963 at Huntingdon College on charges of vagrancy, which was later changed to false pretenses.

Bob Zellner was defended against a possible ten year sentence by Clifford Durr and Charles Morgan Jr.

Bob Zellner attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Bob Zellner was involved in nonviolence workshops at Talladega College, protests for integration in Danville, Virginia, and organizing Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1964 during the Freedom Summer, when he became close friends with Stokely Carmichael.

Bob Zellner investigated the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner with Rita Schwerner.

Bob Zellner did not graduate and returned to SNCC, where he was one of just seven active white members.

Bob Zellner left SNCC in 1966 after the group expelled all white members, and moved to the Southern Conference Educational Fund.

Bob Zellner appealed SNCC's decision in 1967 as he presented a project to organize white workers in Mississippi, but was denied re-entry.

Bob Zellner continued his project without their support, moving with his wife, Dorothy Zellner, to the Gulf Coast and establishing the Grass-Roots Organizing Workers.

Bob Zellner published Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement in 2008.

An oral history based on interviews with Bob Zellner is included in the 2006 book Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s by Jeff Kisseloff.

Bob Zellner published a memoir, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek, in 2011.

Bob Zellner has been married twice, first to Dorothy Bob Zellner and later to Linda Miller.