Claflin University News December 10, 2010 Orangeburg civil rights icon, and Claflin alumna Dr. Gloria Rackley Blackwell dies Gloria Blackwell, a fearless warrior in the fight to desegregate Orangeburg schools and the hospital system and a lifelong advocate for civil rights, died Tuesday in Georgia of complications from congestive heart disease. She was 83. Blackwell, a native of Little Rock in Dillon County, was a prominent figure in what came to be called the Orangeburg Movement. Known by her then-married name of Gloria Rackley, she engaged in protest marches and demonstrations throughout the 1950s and 1960s with other NAACP activists determined to end segregation and ensure equal rights for African-Americans. "She was just a tremendous spirit," U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said Thursday. "She was fearless. We always used to be a little bit concerned for her safety." Rackley was fired in 1963 from her teaching job in Orangeburg District 5 schools for her NAACP activism but went on to have a distinguished career at the college level, teaching first at Norfolk State University, 1964-68, and directing the African American Studies program at American International University from 1968-70. She earned a doctorate from Emory University in 1973 and taught for the next 20 years at Clark Atlanta University, retiring in 1993. She made her home in Peachtree City, Ga. "She was an American civil rights hero," said Cecil Williams, an Orangeburg photographer and author who documented the civil rights movement in his native city. "She really for more than two decades was at the forefront of change in not only South Carolina and Orangeburg but elsewhere too as the movement spread." In the early 1960s, Blackwell was arrested for sitting in the whites-only waiting room at the Orangeburg hospital, shortly after taking her daughter, Jamelle, to the emergency room for an injured finger. The white staff had directed her to the colored area: a set of stacked crates next to a Coca-Cola vending machine. "She thought, surely, they were kidding," her daughter, Lurma, recalled Thursday. When she returned again to the whites-only waiting room "that created all the flutter" and led to her incarceration, one of dozens of times she was put behind bars. U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Perry, then a civil rights lawyer, defended her so vigorously and argued so forcefully for her that he was charged with contempt of court, Perry recalled Thursday. The case was dropped shortly after and Blackwell filed, and won, a civil lawsuit against the officials of the Orangeburg regional hospital, asserting that the operation of separate facilities violated her constitutional rights. "She was a very intelligent woman, very forward in her thinking and imbued with, I think, a determination certainly to be independent," Perry said. "You don't find many people willing to get out and become personally involved; most people prefer to remain on the sidelines and watch others go forth. That was not the case of Mrs. Rackley." Following her firing from the school system, she served as an NAACP field officer, traveling in a small Chevrolet with S.C. State students to marshal citizens in the fight to integrate schools and end segregation. Gloria Blackwell was born March 11, 1927 to Harrison Benjamin Blackwell, a barber, and Lurline Olivia Thomas Blackwell, a teacher in the Little Rock Colored School. Blackwell matriculated at Claflin College, her mother's alma mater, at age 16, influenced in part by the Rev. I. DeQuincey Newman, a black Methodist minister who was instrumental in the civil rights era struggles in South Carolina. A first marriage ended in divorce and she returned to Orangeburg with two young daughters to complete her college education in 1953, all the while involved in civil rights protests. She married a second time, to S.C. State professor Larney "Jack" Rackley, who adopted the girls, Jamelle and Lurma. Her daughters became regular protesters on the picket lines, so much so that Lurma Rackley was sentenced to reform school because of her lengthy arrest record. "The younger people in the movement were pushing to be involved," Lurma Rackley recalled, and because of their youth, they were often released from jail quickly and could return to the picket lines. "We were able to keep it going even when the adults and the college students were getting arrested," she said. After the family received the reform school notice, her mother wanted Lurma to cease protesting. "I told her I really couldn't stop when everybody else was putting themselves on the line," Lurma Rackley recalled. "We made an agreement: she wouldn't picket if I was in jail and I wouldn't picket if she were in jail." Perry later had Lurma Rackley's civil rights record expunged. While white authorities may have found Blackwell difficult to deal with, Lurma Rackley said her mother had a sweetness of spirit and giving that extended to the hundreds of students she nurtured. "She had such a sweet and giving personality," Lurma Rackley said. "She was a mother first and foremost and had always been so sweet and giving; sometimes others glommed on to her and wanted her to be their mother too. It was something we just had to accept." She was an avid Scrabble player and in her spare time worked to restore the boyhood home of Dr. Martin Luther King. In her 60s, Blackwell and her fourth husband Charles DeJournette adopted two sons, Daniel and Harrison DeJournette, now grown, who survive her. Her first child, Ramona, sister to Lurma and Jamelle, died in an accident at age 5 in 1951. Her third husband, Louis Frayser, whom she divorced in 1970 and remarried three years ago, also survives her. Blackwell donated her body to Emory University and Morehouse School of Medicine for research purposes. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18, at Peachtree City United Methodist Church. SANDRA M. PHOENIX Program Director HBCU Library Alliance sphoenix@hbculibraries.org<mailto:sphoenix@hbculibraries.org> www.hbculibraries.org<http://www.hbculibraries.org/> 404.592.4820 1438 West Peachtree Street NW Suite 200 Atlanta, GA 30309 Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis) Fax: 404.892.7879 www.lyrasis.org<http://www.lyrasis.org/> Honor the ancestors, honor the children.