Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Feb. 6, 1986, edition 1 / Page 9
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n Juanita Setz By ROBIN BARKSDALE Chronicle Staff Writer Through the years the NAACP has had countless supporters and wuuuiuuiurs, dui one winstonSalem resident ranks among the organization's most dedicated friends and assistants. Juanita Setzer walked alongside well-known civil rights . leaders in the 1963 march on Washington, and today she still speaks fondly of the organization which she has devoted so much time and energy to supporting. 4 The NAACP is a verv imoor tant organization," Miss Setzer says, surrounded by files of NAACP history and memorabilia. "I have ju&t always felt that it was important to be active in supporting the organization.'' Miss Setzer's involvement with the civil rights organization began while she was living in Washington. She joined the NAACP's Washington branch and bought her first life membership in the early 1960s/One of her greatest" contributions to the NAACP has been her recruitment of life members. Inspired by Kivie Kaplan, then chairman of the life memberships committee, Miss Setzer concentrated her efforts on persuading black citizens to join the organization, which she says was essential to the survival of the black race in America. "When I first heard that Mr. Kaplan had helped increase the number of life memberships by thousands of people, 1 just assumed he was a black man," * -? Gwendolyn Bailey Coleman: "It by James Parker). % Black By ALDON MORRIS ^ Special To The Chronicle Black women were crucial tc rights movement. This fact has often been over male leaders like Dr. Martin Lu Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young , black women assumed both leac in the movement. This is not surprising, because the forefront of the black liberat of Afro-Americans has always f confined exclusively to the role They worked in the fields dui sting of the whip. At the same i and Sojourner Truth worked Railroad to free their brothers t ^ Following slavery, black wo ~ lynching"while they cuofced, sc white women. These were the ci determined women who never lc * 'female' * pedestal. Like their historical counter] were prominent figures of the i Some led and organized dan clear that they were ready to go Others worked the typewriters b out those communications cr grassroots constituency. Many black women risked jo' er: One of th says Miss Setzer. "I saw him at a national convention in the 1960s and discovered that he was a white man. So I said to myself, 'If this Jewish businessman is doing all he is to assure our freedom anH mr\ 11 a 1 /> " "! * * um vtjuiu wppui luiiii^) sui uy i can do more.' M From that point on, Miss Setzer devoted most of her life to advancing the causes of the NAACP. She was also in. strumental in elevating the status of the Washington branch. A 1978 report by then NAACP Vice President Sherman Briscoe documented Miss Setzer *s accomplishments and service to the organization.. His report noted that she recruited more than 500 members annually. Her recruitment campaigns brought in $19,000 annually, and in a 1978 newsletter Briscoe said, "... Juanita Setzer has become the main sustaining force of the local branch, raising nearly half its annual budget every year." "I'm just an ordinary person,'* Miss Setzer says when reviewing t_ - - ncr acnievemenis wnn tne NAACP. "But I love the NAACP. I'm not a person to join everything, but what I'm in, I'm in ail the way. You don't have to be anything special, just dedicated.'* Miss Setzer's love for the organization led her to join the Washington picket lines in the 1960s to protest racial inequality. She stood alongside Mary Church Terrell, who helped organize the NAACP's Washington branch and became its first vice president. B m\ % /^ "*' v/' ?^l T MM^V W| JL / X EjgBy- .^H 'i^^* ^r \ was not me. It was the commun : American m > the rise and success of the civil looked because of the visibility of ther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Jr. and Malcolm X. Nevertheless, lership and behind-the-scenes roles 4 ! black women have always been in ion struggle. The brutal oppression >revented black women from being _ r i 01 nousewnc. ring slavery, and they suffered the time, women like Harriet Tubman fearlessly on the Underground ind sisters. men organized campaigns against :rubbed, ironed and mothered for ircumstances that produced strong, new what it meant to be placed on a parts, contemporary black women nodern civil rights movement. tgerous demonstrations, making it to jail and even die for liberation, ind mimeograph machines, turning ucial to the mobilization of the bs and the lives of their families by 4; % pip i #T #j [J I ifi BHIBAS e NAACP's ] Miss Setzer is moved as she recalls standing with Mrs. Terrell, who was still walking the picket lines at age 90. "Mary Church Terrell was one | or the bravest women I've ever known," says Miss Setter. "She I was just some kind of woman. One of the last times I was with her was out on the picket lines, and her back had become hunched and she was a little slower, but she was still out there fighting. She was something else indeed." Though Miss Setter values the goals of the organization more than the recognition she has received, her efforts have not goite unnoticed. She has received two Kivie Kaplan Awards for outstanding achievement in i _ ' memoersnip recruitment. She has lost track of the number of plaques presented to her at NAACP conventions, but her living room mantel is decorated with several NAACP awards. She has large medallions commemorating her life memberships, and she has countless appreciation letters from high- . ranking NAACP officials thanking her for her involvement with the organization. Miss Setzer shrugs at the honors, saying the overall purpose is more important. *All of this stuff is just sitting around. I don't pay it a v nole lot [1 of attention," she says, seemingly ~none too impressed by her tributes. "I'm more concerned with doing a job than with collecting plaques. They're nice, but Please see page A14 M I ity deciding on a cause" (photo vomem Key pi opening their homes to civil right* Others erected *'citizenship" scho beauty shops and back yards, wh< literate people how to read, write \ There were also black women i movement to abandon sexism so tl within the movement, making the larger society even more powerful As Fred Shuttles worth, a great I "the women made it real." To capture the spirit and dedicati "In '56 and '57, night after n out a citizenship education p illiterates to learn to read register to vote." ? the civirrights movement, the foi brief look at the contributions of R Clark and Diane Nash-Bevel. The* played paramount roles in the mot Rosa Parks Rosa Parks is the mother of the Without her actions, the world mi witness the famous yearlong bus b< 1955-56 and the rise of Martin Lu ship. ' T i|l[t [tj most ardent and d t ^ w' M V m '$ V) rjflfcn^ HI V;'^- v. "11T 3T\' ^ ^ 4 .^^Ml 'Not Special, Just Dedic* Juanita Setzer: "I'm just an ordinary person. E She gives her com By L.A.A. WILLIAMS ty to my peop Chronicle Staf< Writer - "But it wa ' ,?*?. . Coleman add The yew was 957. The place community de was Winston-Salem. The issue The gratjtucje was freedom, and the human and the communit, civil rights of black people to at- She was tend whatever school they pleas- students w! a . Reynolds. Foi into uiis scenario sicppca a the other<; wei 16-year-old black girl named |end Gwendolyn Bailey. In the midst Before spen oT the beginning of the civil rights ionciy years ( movement, her task was to be the D-vnriiHc first black student to attend ten^ed ^i-hlac Reynolds High School, then a the ninth and bastion of white southern racism. ??Thc , "My parents (the Rev. and was 4 very str Mrs. E.E. Bailey) told me it was - "Everything h up to me," Miss Bailey, now coordinated. 1 Mrs. Gwendolyn Bailey Coleman the religious of Waldorf, Md., said. "It didn't wanted to dawn on me how difficult it through." would be. My purpose was to do She said all t the best I could. People were the effort evei depending on me. I felt the dry run of her v^eight, and I felt a sense of loyal- at Reynolds. foyers in the civil # ? activists in the heat of battle. On Dec. 1, 1 ols and "freedom" schools in of Montgomery ire they taught thousands of il- to a white man ind struggle for freedom. Shortly after vho challenged the men in the tgomery organ hat total freedom could emerge development is struggle against injustice in the civil rights mo\ and effective. Most people leader of the movement, put it, a white man b< work. They be on of the women who propelled pulse. This wa* * Like so man: ight, I sat down and wrote rebelling again urogram which would help her arrest in 1 and write so they could NAACP for m the NAACP V ? Septima Clark " Nevertheless, ] [Towmgparagraphs will take a through the Ni osa Parks, Ella Baker, Septima In fact, durii e women, like so many others, comply with se cement. Parks was ejec very same bus < her arrested or According tc modern civil rights movement. the buses and 4 ght not have been privileged to not just that d oycott in Montgomery, Ala., in modern civil rl ither King Jr.'s brilliant leader- This is, why thi c\ ' rr <r S t ? - - - - - - - " he Chionk^rThL?ro(ifty? F^ruary 6^-19a6-Pafl9 A9 edicated supporters I | *? - : , Mi* 'j- 1 .a^fltf^K ^fl M ^ ^ .? ted' Jut I love the NAACP" (photo by James Parker). imunity the credit, le. Despite the potentially exis not me,'* Mrs. plosive atmosphere, her entry at led. "It was the Reynolds in September 1957 was tiding on a cause, relatively quiet. and praise goes to "It was so peaceful that the /." newspapers did not carry the le of three black story,M she said. Though there ho applied to was no violence, there were in various reasons, cidents. re not able to at- Scrawled on the pavement at the entrance of the school on her ding the last two first day were the words, "Go )f high school at home nigger," she said. The . Coleman had at- Senior Service Club at the school :k Atkins High in was trying to wash it off as she IOth grades. approached. school system here Though she did well ong," she said, academically, socially she was a tere was so well- complete outcast. Pain and Parents, teachers, loneliness were her two most concommunity - all stant friends. see this thing "There were two or three ... but not a friend like black hose involved with friends," she explained. "There i went through a were a few who wanted to get to first day of school know me, but they would be Please see page A12 ights drama 1 955, Mrs. Parks - a quiet, dignified black resident 1 - defied local laws by refusing to give her bus seat . % m * - - ? - - Mrs. rarics' arrcstt tnc black community of Monized a mass boycott of the segregated buses. This considered to be the starting point of the modern /ement. believe that Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat to ecause she was tired and weary after a long day at lieve that her courage that day stemmed from im; not at all the case. i freedom fighters, Mrs. Parks had a long history of st racial segregation and inequality. By the time of 955, Ntr*. Parks had been secretary of the local ore than a decade, and she had been the adviser to buth Council. It should be remembered that white the 1940s and '50s viewed the NAACP as a militant organization and treated its members accordingly. Mrs. Parks continued to fight racial segregation \ACP. lg the 1940s, Mrs. Parks had refused several times to gregaion rules On the buses.In the early 1940s, Mrs. ted from a bus for failing to comply. Ironically, the Jriver who ejected her that time was the one wtfo had i Dec. 1, 1955. > Mrs. Parks, "My resistance to being mistreated on anywhere else was just a regular thing with me and lay." Clearly, then, the woman who launched the Ights movement was a seasoned fighter for justice. 5 black masses of Montgomery readily followed her Please see page A12 \ * 6 t J. a * -? -*. ? t * . ? i * j -i i - - ??
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Feb. 6, 1986, edition 1
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