The River of No Return
On November 8, 1944 Cleveland Sellers was born in a rather small town named Denmark located in South Carolina. He grew up there always thinking he would become a priest since he was active in the local Episcopal Church, however his plans began to take a slight turn once he started to take note of the tragic incidents that his fellow African Americans have been going through during this time of segregation. Throughout his childhood, Cleveland was an onlooker of all these incidents until Emmett Till’s death occurred, which hit him pretty hard and that was when he decided to personally get involved in the Civil Rights movements that were happening all around him. Sellers had the idea and quickly created a youth chapter within his school and then began planning a rally that would host a few important guest speakers, like Julie Wright. But shortly before the rally took place, he began receiving disapproving remarks from his family. Especially from his dad who came into his room just hours before the rally was supposed to start and explicitly stated “I want you to stop everything you’ve been doing. …show more content…
Just throughout the summer there were many violent activities occurring within the state. “Four Civil Rights Workers and three Mississippi African Americans were killed just by showing their support for the movement, eighty Freedom Summer workers were beaten, one thousand and sixty-two people were arrested, thirty-seven churches were burned as well as thirty African American households”. Some arrests, like Hardy’s for example, was not a necessary arrest at all because when Hardy decided to ask the policeman as to why he was arresting him, the policeman responded with “You’re under arrest for uh, uh, uh, blocking traffic” (98). Due to these incidents, Sellers felt the need to order liberation and
On November 8, 1944 Cleveland Sellers was born in a rather small town named Denmark located in South Carolina. He grew up there always thinking he would become a priest since he was active in the local Episcopal Church, however his plans began to take a slight turn once he started to take note of the tragic incidents that his fellow African Americans have been going through during this time of segregation. Throughout his childhood, Cleveland was an onlooker of all these incidents until Emmett Till’s death occurred, which hit him pretty hard and that was when he decided to personally get involved in the Civil Rights movements that were happening all around him. Sellers had the idea and quickly created a youth chapter within his school and then began planning a rally that would host a few important guest speakers, like Julie Wright. But shortly before the rally took place, he began receiving disapproving remarks from his family. Especially from his dad who came into his room just hours before the rally was supposed to start and explicitly stated “I want you to stop everything you’ve been doing. …show more content…
Just throughout the summer there were many violent activities occurring within the state. “Four Civil Rights Workers and three Mississippi African Americans were killed just by showing their support for the movement, eighty Freedom Summer workers were beaten, one thousand and sixty-two people were arrested, thirty-seven churches were burned as well as thirty African American households”. Some arrests, like Hardy’s for example, was not a necessary arrest at all because when Hardy decided to ask the policeman as to why he was arresting him, the policeman responded with “You’re under arrest for uh, uh, uh, blocking traffic” (98). Due to these incidents, Sellers felt the need to order liberation and