Annie Bell Robinson Devine
Annie Bell Robinson Devine (1912–2000) was an American activist in the Civil Rights Movement.
Born in Mobile, Alabama and raised in Canton, Mississippi, Devine attended Tougaloo College, similar to Anne Moody (also in the Civil Rights Movement). After college, Annie became an insurance agent and later a schoolteacher.[1]
Involvement with the movement
Annie Devine wasn't very interested in the Civil Rights Movement until Dave Dennis, George Raymond (NAACP) and some others started using C.O. Chinn's motel to hold NAACP meetings. She would pass by their meetings on her way home some nights, and one night she decided to join in after they moved the meetings to a church away from the city center. Annie became interested in Civil Rights after a quick encounter with a cop at that specific meeting. That very next day, Devine started canvassing for votes on the streets of Mississippi; she began meeting with other blacks in Canton to discuss civil rights issues. Eventually, Devine quit her job selling insurance to work full-time for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Quickly realizing that canvassing and asking for votes wasn't making a huge dent in the movement, Annie wanted to be a part of the bigger phase two. In 1964, Devine joined Fannie Lou Hamer and Victoria Gray Adams to become the first black women to speak before the United States House of Representatives. The three were elected state representatives for the progressive Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Devine helped found the party,[2] and was a member of its delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in New Jersey. Upon returning from the convention, Annie decided to accept running for congresswoman of her district. She was declined by the secretary of state to have her name on the ballot. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was also denied to run individually in the election even though they had the right number of qualified electors. Annie was then elected by freedom votes. She makes sure to state in her interview,[3] “... very strong feeling there had to be some political force other than civil rights organizations in this state to bring about change” (Devine). Annie also had a very strong opinion about the Voting Rights bill passed by president Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. She said, “there’s nothing in the voting bill that can really protect you. You can get registered, the federal registrar will register you, there’s some clause in there that says the FBI can see to it that you’re protected when you go down to vote, but before voting day and after voting day there’s no protection provided.. And that’s where the trouble comes in” (Devine). Mrs. Devine was set on the bigger picture of having full rights and not bits and pieces of equality.
Freedom Summer
External videos | |
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“Interview with Annie Devine” conducted in 1985 for the Eyes on the Prize documentary in which she discusses the disappearance of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman (activist), and Michael Schwerner and the effect on other civil rights workers. |
Annie Devine was heavily involved with the movement in the summer of 1964 which was named Freedom Summer. Although these few months did so much good for the moment with the main goal of getting more registered black voters in Mississippi, there were still many tragedies involving police brutality, lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, etc. One instance which Annie relays in an interview[4] is the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. At the beginning of Freedom Summer, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, all taking part in the movement, disappeared. The bodies of the young three men were finally found on August 4.[5] Annie Devine has a specific memory of this horrible occurrence and how it shaped the movement: “The, the incident, you know, where the volunteers were missing and couldn’t anybody tell what had happened to them. We, you know, you could think anything... We weren’t playing. Our organization was tight. We knew from Atlanta to Washington day by day what was happening in the communities and, I think, that, that encourage the local people to open wider their doors” (Devine). Annie explains how the movement was in its height when these young men were murdered and while it was devastating, their work became as focused as ever to prove that there would be a positive outcome.
References
- ^ "Annie Devine - SNCC Digital Gateway". SNCC Digital Gateway. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
- ^ Hine & Thompson, p. 282
- ^ "Oral history interview with anonymous, Negro, female, FDP: member of ex. com., 0488 (sides 1 and 2), 0489 (side 1), Canton, Mississippi". purl.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
- ^ "Interview with Annie Devine". repository.wustl.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
- ^ "Slain civil rights workers found - Aug 04, 1964". History.com. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
Bibliography
- Hine, Darlene; Thompson, Kathleen (1999). A Shining Thread of Hope. Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-0110-X.
External links
- SNCC Digital Gateway: Annie Devine, Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
- Obituary in The New York Times
- v
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(timeline)
groups
- Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
- Atlanta Student Movement
- Black Panther Party
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Committee for Freedom Now
- Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
- Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
- Council of Federated Organizations
- Dallas County Voters League
- Deacons for Defense and Justice
- Georgia Council on Human Relations
- Highlander Folk School
- Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
- Lowndes County Freedom Organization
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
- Montgomery Improvement Association
- NAACP
- Nashville Student Movement
- Nation of Islam
- Northern Student Movement
- National Council of Negro Women
- National Urban League
- Operation Breadbasket
- Regional Council of Negro Leadership
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Regional Council
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- The Freedom Singers
- United Auto Workers (UAW)
- Wednesdays in Mississippi
- Women's Political Council
- Ralph Abernathy
- Victoria Gray Adams
- Zev Aelony
- Mathew Ahmann
- Muhammad Ali
- William G. Anderson
- Gwendolyn Armstrong
- Arnold Aronson
- Ella Baker
- James Baldwin
- Marion Barry
- Daisy Bates
- Harry Belafonte
- James Bevel
- Claude Black
- Gloria Blackwell
- Randolph Blackwell
- Unita Blackwell
- Ezell Blair Jr.
- Joanne Bland
- Julian Bond
- Joseph E. Boone
- William Holmes Borders
- Amelia Boynton
- Bruce Boynton
- Raylawni Branch
- Stanley Branche
- Ruby Bridges
- Aurelia Browder
- H. Rap Brown
- Ralph Bunche
- Guy Carawan
- Stokely Carmichael
- Johnnie Carr
- James Chaney
- J. L. Chestnut
- Shirley Chisholm
- Colia Lafayette Clark
- Ramsey Clark
- Septima Clark
- Xernona Clayton
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Kathleen Cleaver
- Charles E. Cobb Jr.
- Annie Lee Cooper
- Dorothy Cotton
- Claudette Colvin
- Vernon Dahmer
- Jonathan Daniels
- Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Angela Davis
- Joseph DeLaine
- Dave Dennis
- Annie Devine
- Patricia Stephens Due
- Joseph Ellwanger
- Charles Evers
- Medgar Evers
- Myrlie Evers-Williams
- Chuck Fager
- James Farmer
- Walter Fauntroy
- James Forman
- Marie Foster
- Golden Frinks
- Andrew Goodman
- Robert Graetz
- Fred Gray
- Jack Greenberg
- Dick Gregory
- Lawrence Guyot
- Prathia Hall
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Fred Hampton
- William E. Harbour
- Vincent Harding
- Dorothy Height
- Audrey Faye Hendricks
- Lola Hendricks
- Aaron Henry
- Oliver Hill
- Donald L. Hollowell
- James Hood
- Myles Horton
- Zilphia Horton
- T. R. M. Howard
- Ruby Hurley
- Cecil Ivory
- Jesse Jackson
- Jimmie Lee Jackson
- Richie Jean Jackson
- T. J. Jemison
- Esau Jenkins
- Barbara Rose Johns
- Vernon Johns
- Frank Minis Johnson
- Clarence Jones
- J. Charles Jones
- Matthew Jones
- Vernon Jordan
- Tom Kahn
- Clyde Kennard
- A. D. King
- C.B. King
- Coretta Scott King
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Martin Luther King Sr.
- Bernard Lafayette
- James Lawson
- Bernard Lee
- Sanford R. Leigh
- Jim Letherer
- Stanley Levison
- John Lewis
- Viola Liuzzo
- Z. Alexander Looby
- Joseph Lowery
- Clara Luper
- Danny Lyon
- Malcolm X
- Mae Mallory
- Vivian Malone
- Bob Mants
- Thurgood Marshall
- Benjamin Mays
- Franklin McCain
- Charles McDew
- Ralph McGill
- Floyd McKissick
- Joseph McNeil
- James Meredith
- William Ming
- Jack Minnis
- Amzie Moore
- Cecil B. Moore
- Douglas E. Moore
- Harriette Moore
- Harry T. Moore
- Queen Mother Moore
- William Lewis Moore
- Irene Morgan
- Bob Moses
- William Moyer
- Elijah Muhammad
- Diane Nash
- Charles Neblett
- Huey P. Newton
- Edgar Nixon
- Jack O'Dell
- James Orange
- Rosa Parks
- James Peck
- Charles Person
- Homer Plessy
- Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
- Fay Bellamy Powell
- Rodney N. Powell
- Al Raby
- Lincoln Ragsdale
- A. Philip Randolph
- George Raymond
- George Raymond Jr.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon
- Cordell Reagon
- James Reeb
- Frederick D. Reese
- Walter Reuther
- Gloria Richardson
- David Richmond
- Bernice Robinson
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Angela Russell
- Bayard Rustin
- Bernie Sanders
- Michael Schwerner
- Bobby Seale
- Cleveland Sellers
- Charles Sherrod
- Alexander D. Shimkin
- Fred Shuttlesworth
- Modjeska Monteith Simkins
- Glenn E. Smiley
- A. Maceo Smith
- Kelly Miller Smith
- Mary Louise Smith
- Maxine Smith
- Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
- Charles Kenzie Steele
- Hank Thomas
- Dorothy Tillman
- A. P. Tureaud
- Hartman Turnbow
- Albert Turner
- C. T. Vivian
- Wyatt Tee Walker
- Hollis Watkins
- Walter Francis White
- Roy Wilkins
- Hosea Williams
- Kale Williams
- Robert F. Williams
- Andrew Young
- Whitney Young
- Sammy Younge Jr.
- Bob Zellner
- James Zwerg
songs
- "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
- "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
- "Kumbaya"
- "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
- "Oh, Freedom"
- "This Little Light of Mine"
- "We Shall Not Be Moved"
- "We Shall Overcome"
- "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
- Jim Crow laws
- Lynching in the United States
- Plessy v. Ferguson
- Buchanan v. Warley
- Hocutt v. Wilson
- Sweatt v. Painter
- Hernandez v. Texas
- Loving v. Virginia
- African-American women in the movement
- Jews in the civil rights movement
- Fifth Circuit Four
- 16th Street Baptist Church
- Kelly Ingram Park
- A.G. Gaston Motel
- Bethel Baptist Church
- Brown Chapel
- Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
- Holt Street Baptist Church
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- March on Washington Movement
- African-American churches attacked
- List of lynching victims in the United States
- Freedom Schools
- Freedom songs
- Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
- Voter Education Project
- 1960s counterculture
- African American founding fathers of the United States
- Eyes on the Prize
- In popular culture
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
- Civil Rights Memorial
- Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
- Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
- Freedom Rides Museum
- Freedom Riders National Monument
- King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
- National Civil Rights Museum
- National Voting Rights Museum
- St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
historians