Jane Stembridge
Organizer, Poet, Lover, Revolutionary
Mississippi Delta, Tougaloo, MS
A proponent of freedom, dignity and respect for all humanity, this native white southerner was an original staff member of SNCC and took an active role during Mississippi Summer of 1964. In poetic form and in her life, she still seeks to address the struggles of humankind to understand, appreciate and accept difference, as one of the ways to be free and human
A photo of Jane Stembridge’s uncle, Shep Sawyer, and his new wife, Katherine. Each brought their own maids to the marriage. Shep’s maid on the right is Eloise “Monk” Culbreath and Katherine’s maid on the left was called “Reathie.”
A June 24, 1964, photo of the burned-out station wagon in which civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney had been riding before they were arrested on June 21. At the time the picture was taken, the men were missing and presumed dead.
The police move the body of one of the three murdered civil rights workers on August 5, 1964. The three men’s bodies had been found in a shallow grave earlier that day near Philadelphia, Mississippi. In response to the slayings, Stembridge penned an Open Letter to America, noting the steep price the movement had paid for the country’s attention.
Although she grew up mainly in South Carolina, Stembridge’s family frequently moved around during her early life. Here she is pictured as a toddler when she lived in Cedartown, Georgia.
Stembridge became involved with the civil rights movement out of a sense of anger, repression, and injustice that she observed and experienced growing up in the South.
Stembridge, surrounded by paintings in this photo from Meredith College’s yearbook, earned the superlative “most original.” As an artistic, creative, gay woman, Stembridge felt Meredith offered an accepting student environment where women could make decisions and be heard.
This portrait of Stembridge appeared in Meredith College’s 1958 yearbook. Stembridge transferred to the small women’s college outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, from Baylor University in Texas.
Without a clearly identified goal, Stembridge decided to attend Union Theological Seminary in New York after finishing at Meredith. The move was fortuitous. A speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in March 1960 compelled Stembridge to drop out and move south to Atlanta to join the student movement.
In April 1960, Stembridge became the first secretary for the new organization, working out of King’s SCLC office on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta. In June, she and other volunteers published the first issue of SNCC’s newspaper, the Student Voice.
Inspired by his words, Stembridge spoke to Martin Luther King Jr. after his March 1960 speech at Union Theological Seminary, offering to join the budding student movement. King put her in touch with SCLC chief of staff Ella Baker, pictured here, who organized the April 1960 meeting of student activist leaders in Raleigh, North Carolina, that resulted in the formation of SNCC. Stembridge remembers Baker as a strong and outspoken consensus builder.
Stembridge first met Robert “Bob” Moses at SNCC’s shared office with SCLC on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta in 1960. The two bonded as the quiet, funny, committed Moses helped Stembridge publish the Student Voice and organize SNCC conferences before heading out on a dangerous mission to organize voter registration in Mississippi
This August 1964 poster for a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) rally underscores the outrage following the slaying of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney by Klan members in Mississippi.
Shortly after the men went missing, Stembridge and Danny Lyon attempted to find out any clues about what happened to the missing workers to pass on to SNCC and Attorney General Robert Kennedy by posing as a writer and photographer at the Neshoba County Fair. They were run off by authorities before they could find anything out.
FBI agents called in to assist in the search for the bodies of the three missing civil rights workers drag the Pearl River near Philadelphia, Mississippi, on June 27, 1964, six days after the men went missing.
This photo is from August 1964, prior to the Atlantic City Democratic Convention. As one of the earliest members of SNCC, Stembridge participated in many of the student organization’s key events and helped drive change nationwide.
Subscribe to our content.