Cecil Ivory
Reverend Cecil Augustus Ivory | |
---|---|
Born | March 3, 1921 Arkadelphia, Arkansas[1] |
Died | November 10, 1961 |
Alma mater | Johnson C. Smith University |
Reverend Cecil Augustus Ivory (March 3, 1921 – November 10, 1961) was a Presbyterian minister, disability rights activist and sit-in leader during the Civil rights movement.[1]
In 2017, Ivory was named a Freedom Walkway Local Hero for his activism by the City of Rock Hill.[1][2]
Personal life
Ivory was born to an African American Baptist family in Arkadelphia, Arkansas on March 3, 1921.[3] He was the third of four children, and his father died of a fever while Ivory was a toddler. As a fourteen-year-old, he received a significant back injury from a fall from a pecan tree, but taught himself to walk again since the family could not afford medical treatment.[4] The injury may have caused a blood clot that later permanently disabled him.[5][6]
Determined to continue his studies, he obtained a place at Cotton Plant Academy, a Presbyterian co-educational boarding school in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. At Cotton Plant Academy, he was the star of the football and basketball teams. Thanks to his football skills, he was offered a scholarship to attend Mary Allen Junior College, a Presbyterian school in Crockett, Texas, from 1937 to 1939. His time spent studying there drew him to the Presbyterian Church.[3][4]
Ivory would go on to study at Johnson C. Smith University and earn a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Divinity in 1946 from its school of theology.[6] While at the university, he was the Dean of Pledges for the school's chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi.
After becoming ordained in 1947, Ivory served as a pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Irmo, South Carolina. He was also the Director of Religious Education at Harbison Junior College.[3][4]
In 1949, he transferred to Hermon Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill, South Carolina.[4] While serving as a pastor, he frequently travelled into the countryside to serve at a rural mission church. During one of these trips, he fell off of a pick-up truck, which aggravated his childhood injury and caused him to use a wooden cane and then a wheelchair for mobility.[6][5][3]
He also obtained a master's degree from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of divinity in 1960 from Johnson C. Smith University for his ministry.[5][4]
Ivory was married to Emily Ivory in 1945, and they had three children: Darnell, Cecil Junior and Titus.[5][4] The family often received bomb and death threats due to Ivory's activism, which led Ivory to sleep with a pistol in his nightstand for self-defense.[1][2] Some of these threats came from the Rock Hill chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which had grown in response to the civil rights protests in the area.
From June to October 1961, Ivory was hospitalized with severe pressure ulcers. He died on November 10, 1961, from an infection.[5][7]
Activism
Ivory led many protests against segregation in Rock Hill. He was the NAACP chapter president of the city from 1953 until his death in 1961, and organized sit-ins and bail postings for arrested activists.[6][8]
Bus Boycott
In July 1957, he organized a bus boycott which kicked off a wave of civil rights activism among the city's black population.[1][9][10] After a 24-year-old black woman, Adelene Austin White, was kicked off of a Star Transit Co. bus for sitting next to a white woman, Ivory called an NAACP meeting to coordinate a boycott and met with Austin personally.[4]
The following Sunday, pastors of black churches around Rock Hill announced to their parishes that a boycott of the bus line would begin until the buses were desegregated.
Ivory also created a carpool service to provide rides to the community during the boycott.[4] After a month, he collected donations and bought two used passenger buses to provide free bus service to the community. It was estimated that the boycott led to 90% of the city's black bus riders abandoning the line. By the end of the year, the Star Bus Line had closed.[5]
Sit-Ins
After observing the success of the Greensboro sit-ins, Ivory organized a similar sit-in with students from Friendship Junior College.[9] He arranged for nonviolent direct action training for the protesters from James Thomas McCain Sr. from the Congress of Racial Equality. On February 12, 1960, 150 black students entered Woolworth, McCrory's and Phillip's and Good's drugstores in downtown Rock Hill. The students were met with hostility and violence from white servers and hecklers. A counter-protester threw an ammonia bomb into Good's, and further bomb threats forced evacuation.[10][5][11]
This did not deter Ivory, and he continued to organize further sit-ins. He also created and participated in marches, rallies and pickets downtown while in his wheelchair.[5]
In June 1960, he held the first wheelchair sit-in by asking for service at McCrory's lunch counter.[9] Ivory rolled up to the lunch counter and explained that he was not violating any of the Jim Crow laws that prohibited black customers from sitting there, since he was not actually sitting at any of the seats.[12][6] After being denied service and threatened by the store's manager and a police officer, he was eventually arrested.[5]
By February 1961, he had been arrested multiple times for leading and participating in protests around Rock Hill.[3] For his leadership, the NAACP presented Ivory with a special citation honoring him as the leader of the bus boycott and a counselor student sit-ins. He was also granted a certificate of merit for the Rock Hill chapter's courageous and unselfish service.[5][4] Ivory's actions were acknowledged and applauded by national civil rights leaders such as Ella Baker, Thurgood Marshall and James Farmer.[1]
1961 Freedom Ride
After John Lewis and Albert Bigelow were brutally attacked during the 1961 Freedom Ride at a Greyhound bus depot in Rock Hill, Ivory drove to the depot with a cadre of cars to meet the second bus of riders that afternoon. He rallied local supporters to shield the riders as they got to the cars.[9] As an angry mob of white men followed and cursed at the cars, Ivory led the riders to his house and served them dinner.[5][4] Charles Person, the youngest of the 1961 Freedom Riders, wrote in his memoir that Ivory's ability to "stand up to bigotry from a wheelchair" gave him the courage to continue on the Freedom Ride.[9]
References
- ^ a b c d e f "Cecil Ivory". Freedom Walkway. CITY OF ROCK HILL ECONOMIC & URBAN DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT. Archived from the original on 9 May 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ a b Zwerner, Janna (16 January 2018). "Freedom Walkway becomes more Accessible". disabilitymuseum.org. Disability History Museum. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ a b c d e "Cecil A. Ivory: Presbyterian Leader and Activist". The National Archives of the PC(USA). Presbyterian Historical Society. 15 February 2018. Archived from the original on 13 January 2022. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Timeline: Rev. Cecil Augustus Ivory, 1921-1961". Stories of Struggle.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Brinson, Claudia Smith (2020). Stories of struggle : the clash over civil rights in South Carolina. Columbia, South Carolina. pp. 99–110. ISBN 978-1643361086.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ a b c d e Zwerner, Janna (15 January 2018). "A Hidden Figure Wheels In". Dismuse. Archived from the original on 2 March 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ "Presbyterian Outlook". No. 44. Presbyterian Outlook Foundation. 1961. p. 16.
- ^ "Jet". Johnson Publishing Company. 25 May 1961. p. 11. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Person, Charles (April 27, 2021). Buses are a comin' : memoir of a freedom rider (First ed.). New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. pp. 187–188. ISBN 978-1250274199.
- ^ a b Smith, Jessie Carney (2009). Freedom facts and firsts : 400 years of the African American civil rights experience. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press. p. 24. ISBN 9781578592609.
- ^ Sitton, Claude (11 February 1960). "Negro Sitdowns Stir Fear Of Wider Unrest in South". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
- ^ Cobb, Charles E. Jr. (2008). On the road to freedom : a guided tour of the civil rights trail (1st ed.). Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. p. 140. ISBN 9781616202262.
- v
- t
- e
(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