Solidarity in song: Raising voices and raising awareness since 1973, Sweet Honey in the Rock is an African American a cappella group with a broad range of performance credits, from “Sesame Street” to Carnegie Hall. With mesmerizing harmonies and gifted lyrical flow, the ensemble addresses civil rights, justice, equality, and freedom through gospel, blues, and jazz. Sweet Honey celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a live streamed concert presented by the Charlottesville Jazz Society and Third Row Live. American Sign Language interpreter Barbara Hunt will accompany the singers.
UVA history professor emeritus Paul Gaston both taught and made Southern history.
Laura Branton
When Paul Gaston came to the University of Virginia in 1957, it was overwhelmingly white and male, and segregation was the order of the day. And that’s why the young history professor and early civil rights activist chose it for his life’s work.
He brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Old Cabell Hall in 1963, just weeks before King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail. That same year, Gaston became UVA’s only professor to get punched and arrested during a sit-in at the staunchly segregated Buddy’s restaurant on Emmet Street.
Professor emeritus Paul Gaston died June 14 at age 91.
Daughter Chinta Gaston remembers her brother Blaise teasing her that “Daddy is in jail.”
She also recalls, “My dad was kicked out of Fry’s Spring [Beach Club] after Buddy’s.” A number of people threatened to leave the club in protest of his ouster, she says, “but Father decided it was wrong to belong to a segregated place. My recollection is we didn’t go back.”
As a white boy growing up in Jim Crow Alabama, Gaston might have seemed an unlikely leader of the civil rights charge. But he was raised in the utopian community of Fairhope, founded by his grandfather, an experience he wrote about in a 2009 memoir. “I grew up in a community where equal rights and justice were grounding moral principles,” he once told this reporter.
Gaston’s Deep South roots also struck civil rights legend Eugene Williams, who was head of the local NAACP in the 1950s and met Gaston and his wife Mary at a meeting, where they became regulars. Williams says he was “very impressed” when he heard Gaston was at the Buddy’s sit-in.
“I am speaking of a white man, Paul Gaston, born in Alabama, professor at the University of Virginia, and a sure face at civil rights meetings,” says Williams, who also remembers Gaston’s charm during those days of segregation. “And at the end of meetings he would mingle with the attendees.”
Paul Gaston in 2009 at the site of the former Buddy’s, where he was punched and arrested at a sit-in. File photo Hawes Spencer
The ‘60s were cathartic for Gaston. “Life in the 1960s was the most rewarding era I’ve known,” he said in 2005. “I found a community of students who wanted to shake things up. We marched together, we had sit-ins, we had boycotts. I was their leader—I was 30.”
Gaston was offered jobs up north, but chose to stay at UVA, says his youngest son Gareth. “He wanted to teach white Southerners.” Gareth admires the way his father “combined scholarship and activism.”
Gaston taught the South’s history, and wrote The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking in 1970. The book was republished in 2002 and his former student, Robert J. Norrell, wrote in the introduction that it had “stood the test of time as a historical interpretation.”
He helped establish the Carter G. Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies in 1981. And he is credited with wooing civil rights leader Julian Bond to UVA’s faculty.
In the 1980s, he went to South Africa, met Desmond Tutu, and taught a class at the University of Cape Town, says Gareth.
University of Richmond president emeritus Ed Ayers, former UVA dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, recalls that Gaston was a “legend” when Ayers arrived at UVA in 1980.
“I think Paul will be remembered for both writing and making Southern history,” he says.
Chinta notes her father’s optimism and idealism in his belief that he could dispel racism by talking truth. “He was not successful,” she says. Yet he continued to believe “there was a new dawn that would make these poor benighted white people understand.”
He had a great faith in people, says Chinta. He was “endlessly interested in his children and he was nonjudgmental.”
Mary Gaston died in 2013. Gaston is survived by his three children and two granddaughters. A memorial is planned for the fall.
Dan Rather, whose six-decades-long journalism career included 24 years as anchor of "CBS Evening News," is serving as a keynote speaker at the Tom Tom Founders Festival on April 12. Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters/Newscom
Baby boomers grew up with news correspondent Dan Rather covering the civil rights movement, the assassination of President John Kennedy and the Vietnam War. They raised families while Rather anchored “CBS Evening News,” a coveted position he took in 1981 and held for 24 years. Now a whole new generation knows Rather from YouTube’s The Young Turks, cable television and his active Facebook page, which has 2.5 million fans.
Like the Energizer Bunny, Rather, 86, keeps on going.
Last year he published What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, and he’s headed to Charlottesville to serve as a keynote speaker for the Tom Tom Founders Festival on April 12.
He spoke to C-VILLE Weekly by phone from New York, and gave us the scoop on civil rights then and now, fake news—and the dirt on Walter Cronkite. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.—Lisa Provence
C-VILLE: What were you thinking when you were seeing what was going on with the Unite the Right rally here last summer?
Rather: Obviously I was appalled by what happened when it became clear how it was developing organically, which is to say, neo-Nazis and others in protest against the protesters. So I wasn’t surprised what happened. I was surprised at the president’s incendiary remarks in the wake of it. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Obviously with a person being killed, it was a tragedy for the victim and her family; it was a tragedy for the community and a tragedy for the country.
In August 1963, Dan Rather was appointed chief of CBS’ Southern bureau in New Orleans, but he happened to be in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Three days later, Rather described on-air what happened, but he came under fire for incorrectly reporting that Kennedy’s head fell forward after the second shot instead of backward, as seen on video footage. Nonetheless, Rather’s reporting during the mourning period for Kennedy earned him the CBS White House correspondent position in 1964. Photo courtesy of YouTube
You’ve done quite a bit of civil rights coverage during your career. How does what’s happening now differ from what you saw during the ’60s?
When I covered the civil rights movement on a day-to-day basis in 1962 and 1963, it was in not its earliest stages, but still in its early stages. That was a long time ago. Here we are near the end of the second decade of the 21st century. Different day, different time, different demographic makeup of the country, so one has to be a little careful in comparing eras, but there are some similarities.
And one is the vestiges of the Ku Klux Klan. What we’re dealing with as a country and a community, what people were dealing with in the events of August 12, this is the remnants of the old Klan. As an organization the Klan is not nearly as strong as it was in the early ’60s.
On the other hand, the neo-Nazi—I hate to call it a movement, which I don’t think it actually is—but neo-Nazism is much more public now and has more people who are willing to identify as neo-Nazis publicly show their face than was the case in the ’60s.
One of the things I was thinking about when this all happened last summer: Sometime in the late ’70s there was an incident in Skokie, Illinois, in which a group of neo-Nazis paraded in the streets. The president [Jimmy Carter] or certainly members of his administration roundly denounced them. They were dealt with swiftly and roundly condemned by practically all aspects of decent society. Now you contrast that with what’s different now. In the case of Charlottesville, the president, unfortunately, and I think it’s very unfortunate, tried to do some false equivalence between the neo-Nazis and the peaceful protesters who were there. So it’s a big difference.
I would say the biggest difference between now and the 1960s, number one, there’s been a dramatic change in the demographics of the country. Immigration laws changed in 1965 with immigration reform and since that time there’s been considerably more immigration and it’s much more diverse. The other difference is the Klan was much stronger in the 1960s throughout the South.
If you were watching the news coverage of the rally here, did anything stand out to you about how the event was covered or did it seem like familiar times?
One thing is, there was a lot more of it. In the post-digital age, the internet age, there are many more television channels, not to mention other reporters on scene. When I was covering the civil rights movement, CBS News was the only television news organization that was regularly covering it.
That doesn’t tell you much because in those days there were only two other national news organizations, and that was NBC and ABC, and NBC was a little slow off the mark in covering civil rights. In the early ’60s there was no such thing as a television channel with all news all the time. Whereas when this event happened last year, the cable channels were all hours, day and night, around-the-clock coverage. That did not exist in the early 1960s.
The other thing that struck me was that there’s a lot more analysis and commentary than there was in the 1960s. When the evening news expanded to a half hour, which I think was in 1963, an event like this may have gotten four, five, six minutes, but that didn’t allow for very much, if any, analysis and commentary, whereas when this event happened last year, in addition to straight ahead, on-scene, just showing the pictures, you had analysis and commentary.
While we’re touching on newscasts in the early ’60s, is there anything you can tell us about Walter Cronkite that people would be surprised to know? Do you have any dirt on Walter Cronkite that you can reveal now?
[Laughs.] Well of course I do. I knew him very well. They might be surprised to know he had a tremendous sense of humor, which he rarely, if ever, showed on the air. He liked to tell stories, some a little too long and not as funny as he thought they were, but he was a good storyteller and yarn spinner. He loved a good joke, most of them clean but not all of them. He was a very good dancer. Loved to dance. He went to a party and probably danced with every woman in the same area code.
CBS’ Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite cover the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City. The Democratic candidates were future president Jimmy Carter and vice president Walter Mondale. Photo by Dennis Brack
Given the often-cited “print is dead” mentality, why should anyone consider embarking on a career in journalism at this point?
There’s a whole list of reasons not to go into journalism, not the least of which is its notoriously low pay, particularly in the lower ranks of journalism. I recognize that a lot of people, including myself, have eventually gotten in positions where it pays well and, in some cases, very well. But your question was why should anyone go into journalism.
One, when it’s done well, journalism matters. It counts. It can make a difference. In journalism one can have a sense of being part of something bigger than yourself and that can be quite satisfying.
Also, journalism is kind of a constant graduate school of learning. You can’t do journalism and try to do it well without a sense of feeling you’re in a constant graduate school—you’re learning all the time. You learn what happens at the police station after midnight. You learn what happens at the charity hospital. You learn what happens at the zoning hearings at city council. You’re just constantly learning. This is broadening and deepening for one as a person.
Three, if you have a passion for it, even if you’re a local reporter, much less a globe-trotting reporter, there’s a sense of adventure with journalism. You’re learning all the time, you’re broadening and deepening yourself. You have experiences most people don’t have, access to places a lot of people don’t have, so there is the sense of adventure with it.
Journalism is also an ideal place for anyone who is idealistic, and so for all those reasons it can be a great career. However, I say that it can only be a good career for someone who has a real passion going. Journalism is one of those crafts or professions where you have to burn with a hot, hard flame if you’re going to do it well.
Now, there are other professions in which that’s true, but there are many professions that you can go into, you go to work at 9 and leave at 5 and you don’t carry it with you. Therefore you don’t have to have a particularly deep passion for it. Journalism you have to really want to do it. You have to be consumed by a desire to do it, almost something close to, if not an outright obsession.
What advice would you give aspiring young journalists?
I’m not sure I’m the person to give advice to anybody, having made every mistake in the book at least two or three times.
If pressed to do so, I would say, number one, if you’re interested, by all means get into it but understand you have to have a passion to do it. Number two, commit and keep saying to yourself that you are not going to lose your idealism. Number three is you have to learn to write and write well, and in most circumstances, write pretty quickly.
Writing is the bedrock of the press, whether one is going into electronic journalism, television, radio or whatever. You have to commit yourself to a lifetime of being ever-improving as a writer. Writing is the absolutely essential core to becoming a journalist.
One of the reasons is in order to write even reasonably well, you have to think, and writing encourages analytical thinking, challenging almost everything, skeptical—never cynical. For example, you’re covering the city council meeting. You have to say, this is what the mayor says and this is what council man or woman so-and-so says. Now let me get busy and telephone and wear out some shoe leather and find out what’s really going on.
Journalists are being called out for fake news. How do you respond to that when it’s being widely fired out at mainstream news organizations?
First of all, I recognize—and I hope that enough other people recognize—that this accusation is most often put forth by people who seek their own partisan, political or ideological advantage. They’re trying to do two things. One, they’re trying to undermine responsible journalism and the second thing they’re trying to do is exploit it. There’s always been fake news around. But this slogan of “fake news,” much of it is calling anything with which you disagree, no matter how factual it is, fake news.
My general reaction to these accusations of fake news is A), not to worry too much about it and just do the work. Just do the damn work and let it speak for itself.
And the second is that, as a journalist, as the football coaches say, you are what your record is. For good and bad and in between, you are what your record is and you have a record, and to anybody who says what you’re doing is fake news, just put the record out and that’s probably the best you can do.
In my own case, I am what my record is, and my record is not unblemished. It’s not perfect. Nobody can do journalism perfectly and we do make mistakes and it is important when you’ve made a mistake to acknowledge it and pull yourself up and try to go on. But when it isn’t true you also have to stand and face the furnace and stand up for your work.
In 1996, Dan Rather traveled to Cuba to interview Fidel Castro, the infamous dictator who ruled the island nation for more than three decades, for an hour-long CBS report. Photo by Alpha/Zuma Press/Newscom
I will say this about all these accusations of fake news: I think that most people, overwhelmingly most people—and this has been my experience with audiences—most people have pretty good common sense. Most Americans are very good at separating brass tacks from bullshine.
I tend not to be all that worried about these accusations of fake news. Because of the internet and how dissemination of news has changed, there’s so many more opportunities for people to scream fake news to undercut traditional journalism. I don’t like the phrase mainstream journalism. What the hell does that mean?
But traditional journalism can be practiced very responsibly in the four main areas, which are straight news, which is you gather the facts, and then analysis, that’s number two. You can know all the facts and still not know the truth because you have to connect the dots. So analysis is taking the facts and trying to connect the facts, and analyze them.
Then you have commentary. Commentary is not necessarily analysis. It might include it, but commentary is sort of, this is what I’m thinking. And then the fourth area is editorial. Editorial is different from the others. An editorial recommends a course of action: Vote for Mary and not for Jim. Or vote for the bond issue. When you recommend a course of action, that’s an editorial.
I think the public could use a little refresher course so that when they watch something or read something, they can say to themselves, now is this straight news reporting or is it analysis or is it a combination of straight news reporting and analysis? Or is it just commentary or does it recommend a course of action and is therefore an editorial?
If news consumers think of it in those terms, then while there’s certainly something to worry about with these charges of fake news, I’m not going to worry about it very much. What I’m going to do is go out and try to do the work and let the work stand for itself.
How has Facebook changed your life?
Frankly it gave me a whole new lease on journalistic life. I’m very grateful for that. I’m 86 years old, in my 87th year, and to be able to work full-time and then some and to have found an audience, including an audience that is made up of people much younger than myself, is sort of stunning and satisfying. I’m enjoying myself. I can’t remember a time when I enjoyed work any more than I do now.
It continues to amaze me that I came to social media, including Facebook, very late. Frankly, I thought that I was probably past the point I could engage in it, so I didn’t take to it right away. At my company News and Guts, which is a small news operation, younger members of my staff came to me and said, look, if you want to stay anywhere close to relevant, if you’re going to have a voice, it’s not a choice, it’s imperative. You just have to go to social media.
And I said, well, I don’t think that’s true, but to hell with it, if you think so, well, we’ll try it. And that’s how it came to be and we fairly quickly found an audience, which amazed me and still amazes me. Thank God and whatever other forces are responsible that it happened because I’m just having a terrific time. I get up every morning and can’t wait to get out of bed and find out what’s happening and where there’s a story and chase it.
On his own birthday, Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy presented a proclamation to honor Eugene Williams on his 90th.
Staff photo
Charlottesville’s legendary civil rights leader turned 90 November 6, and Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy presented him with a proclamation declaring the day Eugene Williams Day at a birthday celebration November 4 at Boar’s Head Inn.
Williams grew up on Dice Street in a house with no plumbing, unlike the white-owned abodes on nearby Ridge Street. He went to college, served in the military and came back to Charlottesville as a sales exec for a black-owned insurance company, which gave him the freedom to question the segregation of the 1950s.
As president of the local NAACP chapter, its membership was at a peak, Bellamy says Williams reminds him. After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal schools didn’t cut it in Brown v. Board of Education, Williams recruited plaintiffs to sue the Charlottesville School Board. And when they prevailed in court, Governor Lindsay Almond ordered Venable Elementary and Lane High schools closed rather than admit black children in 1958’s notorious massive resistance.
In 1980, Williams convinced his wife, Lorraine, brother Albert and sister-in-law Emma to sink their life savings into Dogwood Housing to provide affordable housing to families throughout the city, bucking the trend of housing the poor in projects.
Bellamy says Williams “always tells me to push to do more” and advised him that nothing gets done without being a troublemaker, which Williams denies, but says, “I had to be a troublemaker.”
And the proclamation declares, “Eugene Williams has served as a symbolic conscience of Charlottesville for what is right and fair for all people and for bridging the diverse parts of the Charlottesville community.”
Steve Rubin peers into his 1961 Rambler Classic the morning after his car was firebombed by members of the Ku Klux Klan in New Orleans.
The first thing Steve Rubin heard was not the wailing sirens of a fire truck, but the shouts of his house guest, actor Bob Costley, alerting Rubin his car was on fire. Rubin had expected this—he routinely checked underneath his car for a bomb before going to his teaching job at Louisiana State University New Orleans, but he admits he “didn’t even know what a bomb would look like.” And he had moved his son, Joshua, out of the second floor apartment’s front bedroom so that Joshua and his sister, Jennifer, shared the middle bedroom, away from the screened-in porch. Rubin, then president of the New Orleans chapter of the ACLU, had been receiving harassing phone calls at home from people he presumed were Ku Klux Klan members.
It was March 1965, when Rubin stepped out of his house at about 1am to see his 1961 off-white Rambler Classic engulfed in flames. The next morning, a friend of Rubin’s, Ed Holander with the Congress of Racial Equality, who never went anywhere without his camera, snapped a photo of Rubin staring through the hollowed out car, now just a torched metal frame with tattered insides. Eventually three men—all members of the KKK—were arrested for setting fire to a church in town that same night, about 20 minutes before Rubin’s car was set ablaze. Rubin says he knows they were the same men who firebombed his car.
In typical Rubin fashion, he laughs a little at the memory, saying he was glad to get rid of that car, which “couldn’t outrun a Volkswagen.” He didn’t miss it, but finding an insurance company that would cover someone who was now the target of car torchings was another story. When Rubin visited nearby towns on ACLU business, he had to borrow a friend’s black Thunderbird so he was sure he could outdrive the KKK members who pursued him to the town’s borders.
Even with multiple threats and nonstop harassment—he entered his locked office at LSU on three occasions to find a business card from the Klan letting him know it had been there—Rubin never wavered in his dedication to civil rights and helping those in need. It was something that was unavoidable to him; something he had to do.
“I certainly wasn’t important to the civil rights movement though it was, and it changed my life forever,” he says.
Civil matters
Steve Rubin, 83, grew up on Long Island, New York, in a white middle-class liberal household. His father, Max. J. Rubin, served as president of the New York City Board of Education, and was an early outspoken critic of funding public education through real estate taxes, because it meant the suburban schools would be well off, and inner city schools would be poor. There’s a photo of Max Rubin and Bobby Kennedy together on the wall downstairs in Rubin’s study in his Charlottesville home, where other black-and-white images from the era, including the photos of Rubin’s burned car and one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hang. As Rubin takes the King photo off the wall to see if a date is written on the back, he points out a poignant Do Not Enter sign, just visible in the background. These photos and other pieces of memorabilia, a cover of Jet magazine with one of Rubin’s mentors, civil rights activist Mary Hamilton, on the front, to buttons from groups such as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Congress of Racial Equality and the NAACP, are all the remnants he has from his time with the ACLU during the Civil Rights Movement.
Civil rights activist Mary Hamilton is one of Rubin’s idols. When she was addressed in court as “Mary,” she insisted she be addressed as “Miss Hamilton,” the same courtesy given to white people. She spent a month in jail for contempt of court, and the Supreme Court decision backing her changed courtroom procedures in the South. Courtesy subject
Rubin’s foray into civil rights began almost immediately upon his move to New Orleans in 1960 with his wife, Gail, who was pregnant at the time with their daughter, Jenny, and their young son, Joshua. Rubin had been working as a professor in Delaware for two years—his first job after graduating from Carleton College and NYU—when one of his Carleton professors suggested he study at Tulane University. Rubin received a scholarship to Tulane and pursued his Ph.D. in English (though he never finished it) while teaching at LSU’s New Orleans campus.
He remembers well the moment his life changed forever. He had been invited to a meeting of the Congress of Racial Equality and says the evening “stunned” him. One of the young women in attendance asked Ronnie Moore, a civil rights activist who was not more than 18 at the time, if he would march with them the next Saturday. Moore, without hesitation, said he would be marching on Monday in a little town south of Baton Rouge called Plaquemine, and he knew he was going to be beaten there and he would have to go to the hospital. But he said if he was out of the hospital on Friday, he would march with them the next day.
“What struck me was that nobody thought this was a remarkable answer, but I thought it was a remarkable answer,” Rubin says. “The very ordinariness of this anticipated experience…I went home and said, ‘Gail, I’ve got to do something.’”
That something began with Rubin working with the NAACP, for which he led a crusade to get the publisher of the morning and evening newspapers to stop identifying the race of black men who had committed crimes while not identifying white perpetrators. Rubin argued you wouldn’t identify someone as Catholic, so why include their race? The answer he received was that they were doing girls of New Orleans a favor by printing addresses and races of those accused of crimes because “a lot of them didn’t know where their friends lived.” Rubin fired a note back saying the response was “pure vaudeville.” And though he respected the work of the NAACP, which mainly focused on desegregation in schools, Rubin wanted to join an organization involved more directly on the front lines—he never could shake the image of a battered Moore marching. In the fall of 1963, Rubin joined the board of the New Orleans ACLU chapter, “a tiny group” then, became its president in 1965 and served as a national ACLU board member from 1965-68.
Justice for all
One of Rubin’s most vivid memories from his time as ACLU president was of a march from Franklinton, Louisiana, to Bogalusa, a town 19 miles away. He can’t recall the date of the march or how many people were involved, but what he does remember is the black woman who walked in front of him, with ankles so swollen he knew each step was excruciating.
“I could see that every step had to be painful for her, she was ahead of me, and she did those 19 miles,” he says. “I would get so moved by that.”
She was his reason to keep going–on that day and many others.
Rubin’s friend, George Thomas, who taught photography at MIT, took this photo of Dr. Martin Luther King in Boston. The photo has never been officially published, and Rubin has a couple of prints. Courtesy subject
He participated in several marches and protests over the years, and learned the words to many spirituals that served as a mantra during the demonstrations. After moving to Charlottesville in 1993, Rubin got to see Odetta perform at the Gravity Lounge off the Downtown Mall—the last time he had heard her sing was at a CORE/ACLU event in New Orleans. He keeps a recording of Odetta singing one of the many hymns that became the soundtrack to the Civil Rights Movement on his desktop computer, and says he “has to hear it every so often.”
Years ago, three white farmers from upstate Louisiana visited Rubin’s tiny ACLU office in New Orleans, which was certainly not a normal sight. He said when they looked at each other he could see it in their faces: He was the enemy. The men told him they wanted their children to go to school but their children didn’t have birth certificates; in those days birth certificates were required to attend school because race was listed on them. They were afraid someone might say their children weren’t white, and thus they would not be able to attend all-white schools. Rubin called his friend Lolis Elie, a partner in the firm of Collins, Douglas and Elie and an eventual assistant district attorney for the city. Rubin laughs at how the white men initially were unsure about accepting help from this African-American lawyer, but that the suit on their behalf resulted in the removal of race on birth certificates in Louisiana.
Rubin remained friends with Elie’s family throughout his life. Elie’s wife, Geraldine, and daughter, Migel, have visited the Rubins at their summer home in Nova Scotia—where Migel ate crabs for the first time. And among the hundred or so photos on the Rubins’ refrigerator is one from a visit from Elie’s son, Lolis Eric Elie, who attended graduate school at UVA. Lolis Eric is wearing a white apron while stirring a big pot of his family’s signature gumbo that takes nine hours to make.
Charlottesville resident Steve Rubin was president of the New Orleans ACLU from 1965-68. Photo by Jackson Smith
In the ’60s, part of Rubin’s job was to visit potential plaintiffs at their home on the ACLU’s behalf. During one visit to Bogalusa, he planned to speak with a family about desegregating the local hospitals—at that time black citizens had to drive to New Orleans, 75 miles away.
He pulled up to the house only to find all the neighbors camped out on their roofs holding rifles. Someone handed him a .22, and he thought, “What the hell am I doing on the roof with a loaded rifle? I’m not going to pull the trigger.” The night before, someone had shot into the house, and the neighbors were ready to retaliate. Thankfully, Rubin says he was never put to the test.
Rubin wrote multiple letters to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights John Doar, about numerous incidents that had occurred in Bogalusa (Rubin says it was common knowledge half of the local police force were Klansmen). In one letter, Doar responded that his office had brought a suit prohibiting discrimination at six restaurants in Bogalusa. While true, it wasn’t enough for Rubin, and he persisted in his correspondence. Years later a suit was brought against the Bogalusa Police Department—a victory.
Twice Rubin was chased from Bogalusa by KKK members after being there on ACLU business. They pursued him all the way to the causeway leading to New Orleans. The whole time he was driving he hoped he didn’t get a flat tire; or if he was in Elie’s car he anticipated how the car would swerve to the left if he hit the brakes.
The effects of Rubin’s involvement trickled down to his family. When his daughter called out “Good morning!” to a certain neighbor, he kept walking without acknowledging the little girl. That broke Rubin’s heart. And it got to the point where he couldn’t let his children answer the home phone, because the person on the other end would tell them, “I killed your daddy today,” or they would detail the route the children took to school. But both Rubin and his wife were steadfast in their part in the Civil Rights Movement and refused to stop being involved, despite threats. Their phone was tapped, too, they knew. On one occasion, Rubin received a call to be at a certain street at 3pm for a demonstration. When he got there, police cars had already surrounded the area.
“Yes, I worried about Gail and the kids but I think I did the right thing,” Rubin says. “I’m very grateful that I was there, no matter how minor a role or participant. I would have hated to be a spectator, because it was, after all, one of the major events in our lifetime in America. I was always grateful I wasn’t in Ohio, where I might have joined organizations but it was pretty white bread.”
In 1968, a lawyer who also served on the national board of directors for the ACLU flew to New Orleans from New York City to try to convince Rubin to become head of the national ACLU, which Rubin calls a “shocking” invitation. The man who accepted the position, Aryeah Neier, was “the right guy for the job,” Rubin says.
“When I left the movement I didn’t even want to read about it—I couldn’t,” he says. “I went 10 to 15 years without reading a word, unless somebody sent me a clipping. Now I’m greatly happy to have done it.”
Rubin went on to chair the English department at the State University of New York at Oneonta, the city where he and his family lived for 15 years. He and Gail moved to Charlottesville after many visits to see their best friends from their civil rights days in New Orleans.
“I was the winner here,” Rubin says. “I came away from the movement not having contributed a great deal, but it contributed a great deal to me. And I knew it when we left New Orleans.”
Finding a family
When you enter Mike Mallory’s office, one of the first things you notice is the “Steve Rubin wall” in the back right corner. As an homage to the longtime Ron Brown Scholar Program volunteer, Mallory, president and CEO of the nonprofit, has put up not just framed photographs of Rubin, including him with his torched car and an article written about the incident, but also photos of Rubin’s family—one of his father, Max, with his arm around Bobby Kennedy—the same one in Rubin’s study—and a photo of Rubin’s daughter, who was killed in 1984 in Togo, Africa, while on a Peace Corps assignment.
Rubin’s father, Max J. Rubin, right, served as president of the New York City Board of Education, and Bobby Kennedy used him as a resource on public education, especially regarding funding. Courtesy subject
The wall looks more like something you’d find in someone’s living room, which is fitting—Rubin, who began volunteering with the program in 1998, a year after it was established, is like family. Mallory says he and Rubin connected instantly when they were introduced by a mutual friend who told Mallory, “You just have to meet this guy.” Rubin opened up about what happened to his daughter, and that he had videotapes of the CBS special the network ran after her death, and Mallory said he would have them made into DVDs to preserve them.
“We just felt connected—it can’t be really explained,” Mallory says. “He’s a kind fellow and he would do anything for anybody, but I needed a lot [at that time].”
Again, Rubin jumped right in. Alongside a staff of just three at the time, Rubin volunteered as much as he could—up to 30 hours a week—serving as a reader of scholarship applications. Each year, approximately 25 African-American students across the country are awarded a $40,000 college scholarship through the Ron Brown Scholarship Program. Out of a field of 5,000 to 7,000 applications, Rubin and his team of readers would whittle the candidates down to the top 200. The 175 students who don’t receive scholarships are called Ron Brown Captains, and remain in touch with program graduates and mentors about opportunities for furthering their careers. Mallory, who has saved his calendars since 1987, can recall every Ron Brown Scholar Program recipient, and knows where they are now and what they’ve accomplished; continuing mentorship is a cornerstone of the program, as the scholars go through college and start careers/internships.
Rubin’s last official program title was “editor”—no correspondence was released without him having read it first. His most recent project began two years ago, when he laid the foundation for a book tracing the organization’s 20-year history, which will be released in April (a retired UVA professor took over editing the book when Rubin had to step away from volunteering after his health declined).
During days when Rubin came in to volunteer, Mallory had to institute the three-minute rule. He was only allowed to speak to each staff member or volunteer he passed for three minutes, otherwise, he’d never get any work done.
“He’s one of my favorite people!” exclaims Kiya Jones, a 1999 graduate of the Ron Brown Scholar Program who now leads the organization’s high school Guided Pathways Support program. For years she shared an office with Rubin, who told stories from his civil rights days.
“He talked about how he had done all this civil rights work in Mississippi and Louisiana, and then I later moved to Mississippi and got to travel a lot in Louisiana and I just don’t see how he could have done that,” she says. “Just incredible stories, not just how he survived there back then—it’s hard enough to survive in those places today— [but why] he chose to be there and do that work for so long. And, he has good taste in barbecue.”
Jen Fariello has been the Ron Brown Scholar Program’s official photographer since it started. She sees Rubin every year at the annual awards ceremony, and says she loves how he has become a mentor to all the incoming scholars and program participants—they know they have someone in their corner.
“The thing that always struck me about that is they’re the kindest, happiest, most positive and uplifting people I have ever met,” Fariello says about Rubin and his wife, who accompanies him to the ceremonies. As for Rubin himself, “He would give you the shirt off his back.”
Well, he did almost that one year, when one of the scholarship winners, who went on to attend Princeton and now works at Amazon, forgot his dress shoes. Right before the ceremony, Rubin gave the student his own shoes to wear.
“These people in this program, they transform the lives of these young boys and girls in a way unlike any other scholarship program; it’s not only money, but giving them mentorship, family and structure,” Fariello says. “The program is Steve getting to save a life all over again.”
Fariello is referring to the tragic death of Rubin’s daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer had been on a Peace Corps assignment in the village of Defale, in the West African country of Togo, for a year when she was murdered by a villager she had befriended. The woman, Giselle, had stolen some items from Jennifer, and instead of going to the police, Jennifer told the girl’s father, who was also her landlord. Giselle and two other men were charged with Jennifer’s murder—at the time the ninth killing of a Peace Corps volunteer in the program’s 23-year history. Rubin said in an article in the New York Times that despite feeling lonely, his daughter wrote to her parents that she knew she was exactly where she needed to be, helping women build more efficient stoves out of local materials, such as mud. The Rubins received many letters that the Peace Corps forwarded—and they answered every single one.
One day the Peace Corps called and said they had Togo on the other line. Two of Jennifer’s killers had been caught (the third fled to Ghana), and the court wanted to know if the Rubins wanted them executed—it would happen immediately. Rubin looked across the room at his wife, and said into the phone, “Tell the court we do not request they be executed.”
“It saved our lives,” Rubin said. “That was a stroke of good fortune to be given the option and not to have sought vengeance. We had subsequently thought we might not ever have been normal again had that not happened.”
Muhammad Ali on the Downtown Mall in 1990.
Photo Bill Emory
After Muhammad Ali moved to a farm in Nelson County in 1982, it wasn’t that unusual to spot him on the Downtown Mall, and his local connections remained even after he moved away. The boxing and civil rights legend died June 3 at age 74.
Ali planned his funeral several years ago with the help of his Charlottesville lawyer and friend of 30 years, Ron Tweel, who is making arrangements for his funeral in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
Tweel’s daughter, Jennifer Kelly, grew up with Ali and his fourth wife, Lonnie, as regulars in her parents’ house—and as role models.
“When we were little,” says Kelly, “Dad would talk about how powerful [Ali] was, how he gave up years of his career for what he believed and that’s how people should act.”
Shortly after defeating Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title in 1964, Ali, born Cassius Clay, changed what he called his “slave name” and announced he was a Nation of Islam convert.
He was stripped of his heavyweight title in 1967 when he refused to be drafted to fight in the war in Vietnam, and he memorably said, “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”He explained, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971—after he’d lost four prime fighting years.
Ali and Jennifer Kelly at Maya. Photo Will Kerner
Kelly also is an admirer of Lonnie. “They were a powerful couple,” she says. “She is a formidable, smart, generous, strong woman I look up to.”
The last time Kelly saw Ali was in October 2014 at her husband’s restaurant, Maya, and she remembers him watching a clip of his fight with Joe Frazier.
“I knew him as this powerful person who stood up for what he believed,” she says. “I feel so fortunate that Lonnie and Muhammad have been a part of my life. He’s influenced so many people.”
In a statement, Kelly describes Ali as “a boxer and a man fighting for civil rights as well as battling Parkinson’s. He was a fighter. But more importantly he was a lover. What I observed is that he approached everything in a deep foundation of love.”
For Chaps Ice Cream owner Tony LaBua, who grew up on Long Island, where boxing was big, and who did some boxing himself, Ali “was just our boxing idol,” he says.
LaBua bought a book by Ali at a yard sale and knew he was a friend of Tweel’s. One day the attorney was in Chaps buying pints of ice cream and LaBua said, “Next time the Champ’s in town, ask him if he’ll sign my book.”
“‘He’s in my office right now,’” LaBua remembers Tweel saying. He went to Tweel’s MichieHamlett offices, and the attorney said, “‘Champ, I’ve got your biggest fan here,” says LaBua.
Ali signed the book. “He looked at me and said, ‘That’ll be $5,’” says LaBua, who has photos of Ali in his restaurant. LaBua joined in the joke and said, “That ice cream cost $12. Your attorney ran out without paying. You owe me $7.”
Muhammad Ali and Ron Tweel with a reproduction of the Olympic gold medal he won when he was 22 years old that was given to him when he lit the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996. Photo courtesy Jennifer Kelly
Tuel Jewelers’ Mary DeViney says when he lived in the area, “You’d see him all the time.”
She saw a philanthropic side to Ali when she was chair of the multiple sclerosis TV auction sponsored by the Jaycees. “We’d get old boxing gloves and he’d sign them,” she says. “He didn’t have to do that. He would give back to this community. He did it so the money would go to research. That’s being part of the community.”
Adds DeViney, “In Phoenix or wherever he was, I bet you’ll find these same stories.”
Mark Lane, photographed in 2012 in his Bellair backyard, holds the manuscript of "Rush to Judgment."
Photo Hawes Spencer.
If a major event happened during the 20th century, attorney and civil rights legend Mark Lane likely was there. The man who wrote in 1966 Rush to Judgment, which disputed the Warren Commission conclusions and spawned a conspiracy-theory industry on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, died May 10 at his Charlottesville home at age 89.
When Kennedy ran for president, Lane was his campaign manager in New York. He was arrested as a Freedom Rider in 1961 while serving as a New York state legislator. When Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Lane said the black civil rights leadership asked him to represent James Earl Ray because they weren’t convinced the U.S. government wasn’t involved in King’s death.
He was friends with Jane Fonda during the Vietnam War, and when cult leader Jim Jones told his 900 followers to drink the Kool-Aid in 1978 in Guyana, Lane, his attorney, “was one of four people to survive,” he said in 2006.
“I was always impressed with the breadth of his knowledge,” says retired UVA history prof Paul Gaston, who met Lane through his sister, Ann Lane, who was UVA’s director of women’s studies. “He was involved in so many events of the ’60s.”
Lane wrote 10 books, including his 2012 memoir, Citizen Lane: Defending our Rights in the Courts, the Capitol, and the Streets.
Gaston says he read some of Lane’s manuscripts, such as Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK in 2011 and admired his work. “Mark was a very compelling speaker. He was so persuasive, nobody could disagree with him.”
Lane is survived by his wife, Trish, and three daughters. He moved to Charlottesville to be close to his sister, and when she moved to New York, he remained.
Trish Lane says the part of Lane’s long career he was most proud was “his early civil rights days as a Freedom Fighter, going through the South, getting arrested and being part of that change.”
He represented James Richardson, a wrongfully convicted black migrant worker who was on death row for the murder of his seven children and was freed after 21 years in prison. Lane said getting Richardson released “was the most wonderful moment of his life,“ remembers his wife.
“My husband was a remarkable man who spent his entire life committed to securing justice and equality throughout this country over the past seven decades,” says Trish Lane. “He changed the course of our history for the better through his tireless devotion.”
Lane did not want a funeral service, says his wife. “As he said, most of his friends were dead.”
