Spotlight Features
Howard Romaine
"In the spring of 1968 several of us started The Great Speckled Bird in Atlanta, including SSOC people like Gene and Nan Grogan Guerrero, Anne Romaine, and me, as well as non-SSOC people like Tom and Stephanie Coffin. Martin King was killed on one of the first few issues, then came Wallace's shooting, Robert Kennedy in June, and in August the Julian Bond led delegation of civil rights and McCarthy people, including Taylor Branch, upset the Maddox delegation and was seated in Chicago, using the precedent set by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in '64. I was in Chicago for 'The Bird' and we had inside coverage of the upset that The Atlanta Constitution did not have.
In '69 Anne and I had our baby, Rita Marie Romaine, whose diaper was changed by Doug Kershaw after his break-through appearance on the Johnny Cash show from Nashville, along with Bob Dylan. Anne Romaine continue to tour with SSOC's southern folk tour, which morphed into the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project, and kept going as if the folk who 'killed SSOC' never existed.
Same with The Bird.
In '70 Sue Thrasher, Julian Bond, and I started the Institute for Southern Studies. John Lewis and Peter Bourne and N. Jerold Cohen, I believe, were all on the board. We did research, had seminars with people like Gunnar Myrdahl, Richard Barnet, Julian Bond, Gar Alperovitz, and others taking stands against the Vietnam war. Bob Hall and Jackie Hall came to Atlanta from New York in the early 70's and Bob went to work for the Institute. Reber Boult was working there too, for awhile.
In 1972 I was on a fundraising trip for the Institute with Julian and John Lewis in New York, and McGovern made a good showing in New Hampshire, and I convinced Gary Hart to give us money and staffing for an effort in Georgia. He did, and a collection of Vietnam Vets against the war, student anti-war acitivists, and civil rights forces led by Bond carried the nomination for McGovern. I wrote a piece profiling Morris Dees for The Atlanta Constitution, "The Man Behind McGovern's Money."
In 1973 Anne left for Nashville to become a country star, I went to DC with Andy Young's staff to see if we could stop Nixon, and when we did I went home to Louisiana, where I went to work in the offshore oil business. In December my Mom ran head-on into an 18 wheeler, and she was killed and my back was broken in a number of places. The doctor said I could never do any honest work again, whether typing a key board or picking and toting drilling mud, so I went to LSU law school, and became a lawyer, which I have been in Louisiana, Tennessee, and now Georgia, still to this date. I've focused heavily on carwreck injury cases, but have done civil rights, employment law, environmental law, and other types of civil litigation.. I've also been writing a memoire of the above from '63-'73, so apologize for the length."
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/ssoc/bio.htm
Ed Hamlett
Ed Hamlett was one of the original founders of SSOC and served on the Executive Committee in 1967 and 1968. As a former member and director of the White Southern Students Project for SNCC, Hamlett made attempts to maintain similar goals and objectives within both organizations. Hamlett also traveled around to several college campuses in efforts to form new chapters of the SSOC.
Hamlett wrote a collection of papers known as the Ed Hamlett Papers. The compilation of papers consisted of correspondence, notes, photographs, reports, proposals, and writings by others. Hamlett’s involvement in both SNCC and SSOC is well documented within the papers.
Hamlett graduated from the University of Tennessee Nursing School and began working at Vanderbilt University in 1976.
Hamlett retired from Vanderbilt Nursing in 1998 but continues to work part-time in home health nursing.
Quote from “We’ll take our stand”-
“We do hereby declare, as students from most of the Southern states, representing different economic, ethnic and religious backgrounds, growing from birthdays in the Depression years and the War years, that we will here take our stand determination to build together a New South which brings democracy and justice for all its people.”
Anne Romaine
Anne Romaine is known for compiling the South’s musical heritage and giving it back to southerners through the folk tours she organized. She was the founder of the Southern Folk Cultural Revival Project which featured grassroots black and white performers of traditional Southern music.
Romaine grew up immersed in music. She was an avid piano and sang in her church choir. She was the daughter of a successful lawyer who once served as a state senator and her grandparents were tied to the Cannon Mills in Kannapolis.
After spending several years at Queens College in Charlotte, N.C., Romaine enrolled in graduate school at the University of Virginia. Here she became involved with various student organizations. She became most active with local civil rights efforts, as well as the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC).
Anne and her husband, Howard, met through working with the SSOC/SNCC White Folks Project during the Mississippi Summer Project. They spent the next summer in a student-organized voter registration project in Virginia.
Romaine then organized the most productive event sponsored by the SSOC: the Southern Folk Music Festival. Eventually, she moved back to Gastonia, helping to produce the documentary about the great Southern textile strike, “The Uprising of ’34.”
