Gwendolyn Middlebrooks
Mentor, Encourager, Giver
Atlanta, Georgia
Though protected from Jim Crow by her family, she began to experience discrimination as a teenager in Atlanta, when she engaged in her first protests. At Spelman College, she was arrested for sitting-in at segregated lunch counters, and assisted the civil rights movement in numerous ways. She continues to be deeply committed to civil and human rights for all.
Black passengers sit in the back of a segregated bus in Atlanta, Georgia in 1956. Middlebrooks remembered following Daddy King’s advice that when they were forced to stand on a bus, she and other students should stack their books in large piles on empty seats next to white passengers. The white passengers would often move to sit next to other whites in the front, making seats available for blacks.
Black college students including Gwendolyn Harris Middlebrooks (second from right) sit in a women’s detention room in Atlanta, Georgia on March 15, 1960. Middlebrooks was arrested for her participation in a sit-in at the cafeteria at the state capitol building, part of a citywide effort to desegregate restaurants.
A police officer takes the names of black students involved in a sit-in demonstration at a lunch counter in Atlanta, Georgia on March 15, 1960. Middlebrooks took part in the organized citywide action, protesting at the state capitol building. Sitting silently, she and others were gawked at by onlookers. She remembered feeling that it was “the way animals feel in the zoo.” © Bettmann/CORBIS
Black protesters mount a sit-in at the Woolworth’s in Atlanta, Georgia on October 20, 1960. Middlebrooks continued to be involved in aiding demonstrations, strategizing nightly as well as transporting students to protests. Working for the King family at the time, she often used the car of Martin Luther King, Jr. to do this.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan march in front of Rich’s department store in Atlanta on December 26, 1960. Upon learning that the Klan would be coming to town to protest, Mayor William Hartsfield urged black protesters to call off their picketing of the store, but they refused.
Black student activists may have utilized nonviolence to desegregate restaurants, but angry white segregationists did not. This photo shows a young white man spraying insect repellent at the dozens of blacks mounting a sit-in at Woolworth’s in Atlanta in October 20, 1960.
Martin Luther King, Sr., known as “Daddy King,” delivering a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1964. King’s lessons on the importance of uniting as a people and standing together made an impact on Middlebrooks, who began attending the church in the 1950s.
Middlebrooks, who attended and later taught at Spelman, had family connections at the school.
Middlebrooks first went to the theater when she was sixteen years old and did not realize at first that there was another entrance for white patrons. Her parents had tried to shield her from the reality of segregation.
Middlebrooks found a way to protest segregation at the Fox Theater in her own way. When she was a student at Spelman College, Middlebrooks and her friends took an Indian professor to the theater. Dressing in her clothes and pretending that they were all from India, Middlebrooks and the others were able to enter through the front door, something she could never do otherwise.
Blacks protesting segregation outside of Rich’s, Atlanta’s largest department store, in December 1960. Middlebrooks recalls that the Ku Klux Klan’s attempt to mount a simultaneous protest actually ended up being counterproductive because “they did a better job of keeping people from shopping than we did.”
A woman carries a sign in protest of the segregation of Rich’s department store in downtown Atlanta in December 1960. Harris was involved in the protest of Rich’s, as well as other restaurants and stores in Atlanta, in 1960.
Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. Middlebrooks became a member of the congregation when she was 10 years old.
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