George Raymond
George Raymond | |
---|---|
Born | (1914-05-10)May 10, 1914 Chester, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Died | May 9, 1999(1999-05-09) (aged 84) |
Resting place | Haven Cemetery, Chester, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
Occupation(s) | President of the Chester, Pennsylvania, branch of the NAACP |
George T. Raymond (May 10, 1914 – May 9, 1999) was an American civil rights leader from Pennsylvania who served as president of the Chester, Pennsylvania, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1942 to 1977.[1] He was integral in the desegregation of businesses, public housing and schools in Chester and co-led the Chester school protests in 1964 which made Chester a key battleground in the civil rights movement.
Early life and education
Raymond was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Chester High School in 1933. He studied business administration at Drexel Institute of Technology for one year but economic hardship forced him to leave school and find work.[2]
Raymond worked at multiple odd jobs and finally landed at the Chester Boys Club, joined the NAACP and began his career in the civil rights movement.[3]
Career
Raymond became the leader of the Chester branch of the NAACP in 1942 and began to implement programs to end racial discrimination.[4] He partnered with J. Pius Barbour, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Chester and together they adopted a gradualist approach to civil rights.[5]
In 1945, Raymond and the Chester branch of the NAACP successfully desegregated movie theaters, restaurants, hotels and other businesses in Chester through non-violent protests and the threat of legal action.[6]
In 1953, the United States Supreme Court rendered its decision in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka declaring state laws establishing separate schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The Chester Board of Education technically met the requirements of integration, however Board policy allowed students to request transfers to schools outside their neighborhood. The Board approved most transfers for white students but few for black students. As a result, in 1953, five elementary schools in Chester were almost completely black. However, each of those five schools had white students living within its district that were allowed to attend all-white schools in other parts of town.[7]
In 1955, Raymond and the NAACP desegregated public housing run by the Chester Housing Authority.[8]
In 1958, Raymond purchased a house in the borough of Rutledge, Pennsylvania, in majority white Delaware County. The day before he was to move in, a fire burned down the house.[9] After the fire, the township attempted to exercise eminent domain and claim Raymond's property as a site for a new town hall. Raymond threatened legal action and the township backed down. The house was rebuilt and Raymond took residence in the house in 1959.[10]
In 1964, the Chester school protests led to a month long series of almost nightly protests initiated by Stanley Branche and the Committee for Freedom Now against the Chester School Board de facto segregation of schools. The protests were marked by violence and police brutality which caused James Farmer to dub Chester the “Birmingham of the North,” in reference to the harsh treatment of protesters in Birmingham, Alabama, around the same time.[11][12] Raymond presented the school board with a list of 10 demands including teacher transfers, transportation of students to schools in other neighborhoods, hiring blacks for supervisory positions and hiring more black secretaries.[13] Over six hundred people were arrested over a two-month period of civil rights rallies, marches, pickets, boycotts and sit-ins.[14]
Death and legacy
Raymond died of heart failure on May 9, 1999, and was interred at Haven Memorial Cemetery.[15]
Raymond was presented the Freedom Award by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.[16][when?]
In 1991, the George T. Raymond award was established in his honor by the NAACP.[15]
Three scrapbooks created by Raymond of newspaper clippings, booklets and photographs chronicling the Chester civil rights movement throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s are available online at the Wolfman Digital Collections at Widener University.[17]
References
Citations
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 297.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 302.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 303.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 305.
- ^ Mele 2017, p. 50.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 307.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 308.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, pp. 306–307.
- ^ NAACP: Celebrating a Century, 100 years in Pictures. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. 2009. p. 206. ISBN 978-1-4236-0527-0. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 310.
- ^ "Birmingham Civil Rights". National Park Service. Retrieved March 3, 2020.
- ^ "African American residents of Chester, PA, demonstrate to end de facto segregation in public schools, 1963–1966". www.nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu. Retrieved 26 October 2018.
- ^ "RIOTS MAR PEACE IN CHESTER, PA.; Negro Protests Continue – School Policy at Issue". The New York Times. 26 April 1964. Retrieved 13 July 2018.
- ^ Mele 2017, p. 95.
- ^ a b Raftery, Kay. "George T. Raymond Sr., 84, leader in civil-rights effort". www.digitalwolfgram.widener.edu. Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 1 December 2019.
- ^ McLarnon 2002, p. 341.
- ^ "Chester—George Raymond Papers". Retrieved 14 July 2018.
Sources
- McLarnon, John M. (2002). ""Old Scratchhead" Reconsidered: George Raymond & Civil Rights in Chester, Pennsylvania". Pennsylvania History. 69 (3): 297–341.
- Mele, Christopher (2017). Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-6609-0.
- Sigmond, Carl E. (29 August 2011). "African American residents of Chester, PA, demonstrate to end de facto segregation in public schools, 1963–1966". Retrieved 13 July 2018.
External links
- George Raymond Papers at the Widener University Wolfgram Memorial Library Digital Collections
- 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