One of the great brave and beautiful warriors of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Dorie Ladner, passed on Monday, March 11. Dorie and her sister, Dr. Joyce Ladner, were two no-mess-taking Hattiesburg, Mississippi women who gave their brilliance and courage to the struggle to make a more humane America. I knew them as Freedom Movement friends and colleagues of my Mama and Daddy. Dorie, especially, was a running buddy to my big cousin Charles (“Freeney”). They would hang out with a bunch of SNCC people in Atlanta – full of sharp laughter and bold remembering. Charles in the kitchen making beans or gumbo or something else good and stories circling the living room with drinks and cigarettes, or out in the backyard, mostly flowing high over my pre-teenage head. As Ruby Sales would say, SNCC folk come from a lineage of women and men who “stand flat footed” and wide-stanced knowing they got just as much right to the tree of life as anybody else. They were giants. Dorie, may you rest in peace. (Photo by Fred Sweets) The New York Times published a very good obituary that you can read here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/us/dorie-ladner-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.h1f5.wFnYss9q7hzQ&smid=url-share
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