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An Appeal for Human Rights[edit]
March 9th, 1960
We, the students of the six affiliated institutions forming the Atlanta University Center — Clark, Morehouse, Morris Brown, and Spelman Colleges, Atlanta University, and the Interdenominational Theological Center — have joined our hearts, minds, and bodies in the cause of gaining those rights which are inherently ours as members of the human race and as citizens these United States.
We pledge our unqualified support to those students in this nation who have recently been engaged in the significant movement to secure certain long-awaited rights and privileges. This protest, like the bus boycott in Montgomery, has shocked many people throughout the world. Why? Because they had not quite realized the unanimity of spirit and purpose which motivates the thinking and action of the great majority of the Negro people. The students who instigate and participate in these sit-down protests are dissatisfied, not only with the existing conditions, but with the snail-like speed at which they are being ameliorated. Every normal human being wants to walk the earth with dignity and abhors any and all proscriptions placed upon him because of race or color. In essence, this is the meaning of the sit-down protests that are sweeping this nation today.
We do not intend to wait placidly for those rights which are already legally and morally ours to be meted out to us at a time. Today's youth will not sit by submissively, while being denied all of the rights, privileges, and joys of life. We want to state clearly and unequivocally that we cannot tolerate, in a nation professing democracy and among people professing Christianity, the discriminatory conditions under which the Negro is living today in Atlanta Georgia — supposedly one of the most progressive cities in the South.
Among the inequalities and injustices in Atlanta and in Georgia against which we protest, the following are outstanding examples:
(1) EDUCATION:
In the Public School System, facilities for Negroes and whites are separate and unequal, Double sessions continue in about half of the Negro Public Schools, and many Negro children travel ten miles a day in order to reach a school that will admit them.
On the University level, the state will pay a Negro to attend a school out of state rather than admit him to the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, the Georgia Medical School, and other tax-supported public institutions.
According to a recent publication, in the fiscal year 1958, a total of $31,632,057.18 was spent in the State institutions of higher education for white only. In the Negro State Colleges only $2,001,177.06 was spent. The publicly supported institutions of higher education are inter-racial now, except that they deny admission to Negro Americans.
(2) JOBS:
Negroes are denied employment in the majority of city, state, and federal governmental jobs, except in the most menial capacities.
(3) HOUSING:
While Negroes constitute 32% of the population of Atlanta, they are forced to live within 16% of the area of the city.
Statistics also show that the bulk of the Negro population is still
a. locked into the more undesirable and overcrowded areas of the city;
b. paying a proportionally higher percentage of income for rental and purchase of generally lower quality property;
c. blocked by political and direct or indirect racial restrictions in its efforts to secure better housing.
(4) VOTING:
Contrary to statements made in Congress recently by several Southern Senators, we know that in many counties in Georgia and other southern states, Negro college graduates are declared unqualified to vote and are not permitted to register.
(5) HOSPITALS:
Compared with facilities for other people in Atlanta and Georgia, those for Negroes are unequal and totally inadequate.
Reports show that Atlanta's 14 general hospitals and 9 related institutions provide some 4,000 beds. Except for some 430 beds at Grady Hospital, Negroes are limited to the 250 beds in three private Negro hospitals. Some of the hospitals barring Negroes were built with federal funds.
(6) MOVIES, CONCERTS, RESTAURANTS:
Negroes are barred from most downtown movies and segregated in the rest. Negroes must even sit in a segregated section of the Municipal Auditorium.
If a Negro is hungry, his hunger must wait until he comes to a "colored" restaurant, and even his thirst must await its quenching at a "colored" water fountain.
(7) LAW ENFORCEMENT:
There are grave inequalities in the area of law enforcement. Too often, Negroes are maltreated by officers of the law. An insufficient number of Negroes is employed in the law-enforcing agencies. They are seldom, if ever promoted. Of 830 policemen in Atlanta only 35 are Negroes.
We have briefly mentioned only a few situations in which we are discriminated against. We have understated rather than overstated the problems. These social evils are seriously plaguing Georgia, the South, the nation, and the world.
WE HOLD THAT:
(1) The practice of racial segregation is not in keeping with the ideals of Democracy and Christianity.
(2) Racial segregation is robbing not only the segregated but the segregator of his human dignity. Furthermore, the propagation of racial prejudice is unfair to the generations yet unborn.
(3) In times of war, the Negro has fought and died for his country; yet he still has not been accorded first-class citizenship.
(4) In spite of the fact that the Negro pays his share of taxes, he does not enjoy participation in city, county and state government at the level where laws are enacted.
(5) The social, economic, and political progress of Georgia is retarded by segregation and prejudices.
(6) America is fast losing the respect of other nations by the poor example which she sets in the area of race relations.
It is unfortunate that the Negro is being forced to fight, in any way, for what is due him and is freely accorded other Americans. It is unfortunate that even today some people should hold to the erroneous idea of racial superiorty despite the fact that the world is fast moving toward an integrated humanity.
The time has come for the people of Atlanta and Georgia to take a good look at what is really happening in this country, and to stop believing those who tell us that everything is fine and equal, and that the Negro is happy and satisfied.
It is to be regretted that there are those who still refuse to recognize the over-riding supremacy of the Federal Law.
Our churches, which are ordained by God and claim to be the houses of all people, foster segregation of the races to the point of making Sunday the most segregated day of the week.
We, the students of the Atlanta University Center, are driven by past and present events to assert our feelings to the citizens of Atlanta and to the world.
We, therefore, call upon all people in authority — State, County, and City officials; all leaders in civic life — ministers, teachers, and business men; and all people of good will to assert themselves and abolish these injustices. We must say in all candor that we plan to use every legal and non-violent means at our disposal to secure full citizenship rights as members of this great Democracy of ours.
WILLIE MAYS
President of Council For the Students of Atlanta University
JAMES FELDER
President of Student Government Association For the Students of Clark College
MARION D. BENNETT
President of Student Association For the Students of Interdenominational Theological Center
DON CLARKE
President of Student Body For the Students of Morehouse College
MARY ANN SMITH
Secretary of Student Government Association For the Students of Morris Brown College
ROSLYN POPE
President of Student Government Association For the Students of Spelman College
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Roslyn Pope, 84, Dies; Her Manifesto Helped Fuel Civil Rights Fight
An activist leader in Atlanta, in 1960 she wrote, with Julian Bond’s help, “An Appeal for Human Rights,” which resonated in the struggle across the country.
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Roslyn Pope, who as a senior at Spelman College in Atlanta wrote a 1960 manifesto that set the stage for dramatic advances in civil rights in the city and inspired generations of activists around the country, died on Jan. 19 in Arlington, Texas. She was 84.
Spelman College confirmed the death.
The Atlanta Student Movement, of which Dr. Pope was a founding member, was one of several civil rights groups to spring up across the South in the months after a group of Black students in Greensboro, N.C., captured national attention in February 1960 with their sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter.
Atlanta had a reputation as a relatively progressive place, with the unofficial designation of “the city too busy to hate.” But as Dr. Pope documented in her manifesto, which she wrote with help from Julian Bond, a future chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., Atlanta was in fact riven by racial injustices: unfair housing laws, unequal access to health care, racist law enforcement and persistent school segregation despite the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
“Every normal being wants to walk the earth with dignity and abhors any and all proscriptions placed upon him because of race or color,” the statement read. “In essence, this is the meaning of the sit-down protests that are sweeping this nation today.”
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The manifesto, entitled “An Appeal for Human Rights,” appeared in three Atlanta newspapers and was reprinted in The New York Times, The Nation and The Harvard Crimson. Senator Jacob K. Javits, Republican of New York, had it read into the Congressional Record.
In their detailed elucidation of Atlanta’s racial inequities, Dr. Pope and Mr. Bond made clear that the students rallying behind the manifesto were interested in more than just desegregating lunch counters, though they achieved that in 1961.
The document’s principles helped shape the ideas that propelled the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had its headquarters in Atlanta, and became a template for anyone working toward racial equity in America, then and into the 21st century.
“Its impact and significance lie in the fact that the areas that students focused on in the appeal, back in 1960, are of enduring relevance,” Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a historian at Harvard and the author of “Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement” (2011), said in a phone interview.
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Dr. Brown-Nagin said she teaches the “Appeal” in her courses on law and social change, in part because it illustrates that the civil rights movement was motivated not just by passion but also by ideas.
“The ‘Appeal’ shows that the students predicated their action on an intellectual justification,” she said, “and I think that’s really important.”
Roslyn Elizabeth Pope was born on Oct. 29, 1938, in Atlanta to Rogers Pope, a postal worker, and Ruth (Singleton) Pope, a homemaker. Her father was active in his union, and was so proud of his daughter’s role in writing the manifesto that he mailed copies to his friends at Christmas.
Roslyn’s future in leadership was apparent early. She was elected class president throughout her time at Booker T. Washington High School, and in 1951 was selected to represent Georgia at a national Girl Scout encampment. She was the only Black girl out of the 50 young people in attendance.
At Spelman, she won a Merrill Scholarship, which allowed her to spend a year in Paris studying piano and French. Her time abroad exposed her to life outside of the South’s racial hierarchies.
“I consider that year as the removal of the shackles and my budding realization that the way I had lived the past 20 years had been based on a theory that I was less than human, and that all Black people were less than human,” she said in a 2016 interview with Robert Cohen, a historian at New York University.
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The day after she returned to Atlanta, in February 1960, she was drinking coffee at a diner when two students from Morehouse College, Mr. Bond and Lonnie King, approached her.
“Have you heard about the guys at Greensboro?” she recalled one of them asking. She said she had.
“We’re going to start a movement here,” they said.
“It was as if my prayers had been answered,” she told Dr. Cohen. “I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Where’s the movement I need to attach myself to?’”
She had been elected student body president in absentia, which made her the de facto spokeswoman for the Spelman contingent. More students came from other historically Black institutions in Atlanta: Morehouse, Clark College, Morris Brown College, Atlanta University and the Interdenominational Theological Center.
They began planning sit-ins, and word soon reached the presidents of their respective institutions. Atlanta’s Black establishment was markedly conservative and often wary of youth activism; better, they thought, for the students to keep their heads down and get their degrees.
Three students from each school met with the six presidents. At first, the adults tried telling them to stop. When that failed, they tried to buy time by insisting that the students publish a program outlining their grievances and goals. They even offered to buy ad space in the local newspapers.
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Dr. Pope and Mr. Bond borrowed a typewriter from one of Ms. Pope’s mentors at Spelman, Howard Zinn, a history professor and progressive activist who later found fame as an author; he even let them work at his apartment. Ms. Pope wrote the first draft by hand, using data Mr. Bond had accumulated. He then typed it up, and they proofed it together. They made their deadline.
She participated in subsequent sit-ins and protests, which brought out scores of Spelman students. But her active role in the movement ended with her graduation in spring 1960 with a degree in music. She moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., where she married John Walker and taught in the city’s public schools.
She is survived by her daughters, Rhonda Walker and Donna Walker; two grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and a brother, Webster Pope.
Dr. Pope later studied piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music; received a master’s degree in English from Georgia State University; and in 1974 received a doctorate in humanities from Syracuse University.
She taught music and religion at Pennsylvania State University for two years. In 1976 she moved to Dallas, where she taught at Bishop College, a historically Black institution.
And while she did not achieve the national renown of fellow leaders like Mr. Bond or Mr. King, she was revered around Atlanta as the eloquent intellectual architect of that city’s civil rights revolution.
As Dr. Cohen said in a phone interview: “You could think of her as the Thomas Jefferson of the Atlanta movement.”
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