In Memoriam: Gloria Richardson, civil rights pioneer, passes at 99

Gloria Richardson, an influential yet largely unsung civil rights activist and pioneer, has died. She was 99.

Tya Young, her granddaughter, said Richardson died in her sleep Thursday in New York City and had not been ill, the Associated Press reports.

The Gloria Richardson Story

Her courageous acts went largely unheard.

Richardson’s determination to not back down while protesting racial inequality was captured in a photograph as she pushed away the bayonet of a National Guardsman.

“She did it because it needed to be done, and she was born a leader,” Young said.

Richardson was the first woman to lead a prolonged grassroots civil rights movement outside the Deep South.

Cambridge Movement

In 1962, she helped organized and led the Cambridge Movement on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with sit-ins to desegregate restaurants, bowling alleys and movie theaters in protests that marked an early part of the Black Power movement.

“I say that the Cambridge Movement was the soil in which Richardson planted a seed of Black power and nurtured its growth,” said Joseph R. Fitzgerald, who wrote a 2018 biography on Richardson titled “The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation.”

Richardson became the leader of demonstrations over economic issues like jobs, health care access and sufficient housing.

“Everything that the Black Lives Matter movement is working at right now is a continuation of what the Cambridge Movement was doing,” Fitzgerald said.

And she never wavered.

In pursuit of these goals, Richardson advocated for the right of Black people to defend themselves when attacked.

“Richardson always supported the use of nonviolent direct action during protests, but once the protests were over and if Black people were attacked by whites she fully supported their right to defend themselves,” Fitzgerald said.

Richardson was born in Baltimore and later migrated to Cambridge in Maryland’s Dorchester County — the same county where Harriet Tubman was born.

She enrolled at the prestigious Howard University at only 16 years old. While in D.C., she protested the segregation of a drug store.

In the summer of 1963, Richardson was back in Cambridge and led peaceful sit-ins that unfortunately turned violent.

Cambridge, Gov. J. Millard Tawes declared martial law. When Cambridge Mayor Calvin Mowbray asked Richardson to halt the demonstrations in exchange for an end to the arrests of Black protesters, Richardson declined to do so.

On June 11, rioting by white supremacists erupted and Tawes called in the National Guard.

Treaty of Cambridge

While the city was still under the National Guard’s watch, Richardson met with U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy to negotiate what became informally known as the “Treaty of Cambridge.”

Richardson’s resilience ordered equal access to public accommodations in Cambridge in return for a one-year moratorium on demonstrations.

Richardson was a signatory to the treaty, but she had never agreed to end the demonstrations.

It wasn’t until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that began to resolve issues at the local level.

She was one of the nation’s leading female civil rights activists and inspired younger activists who went on to protest racial inequality in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Richardson was on the 1963 March On Washington program as a “fighters for freedom”.  However, she was only allowed to say “hello” before the microphone was taken.

Many believe her voice might have been suppressed largely due to a male-centric Black Power movement.

Richardson’s leadership in Cambridge lasted only about three years, which may have obscured her influence, but Fitzgerald said she was well-known in Black Power movement.

“She was only active for approximately three years, but during that time she was literally front and center in a high-stakes Black liberation campaign, and she’s being threatened,” Fitzgerald told the Associated Press.

“She’s got white supremacist terrorists threatening her, calling her house, threatening her with her life.”

Life After Cambridge

Richardson resigned from Cambridge, Maryland, Nonviolent Action Committee in the summer of 1964. She divorced from her first husband and got remarried to photographer Frank Dandridge, reports The Associated Press.

She moved to New York where she worked a variety of jobs, including for the National Council for Negro Women.

Gloria Richardson is survived by her daughters, Donna Orange and Tamara Richardson, and granddaughters Tya Young and Michelle Price.