Image of Dorie Ladner. Retrieved from Dorie Ladner’s Flickr File. Teaching for Change.

By Karla Méndez

Examining the life of Dorie Ladner, civil rights activist and community organizer who dedicated her life to Black empowerment and liberation.

On March 14, 2024, Dorie Ladner passed away. An ardent member of the civil rights movement since she was a teenager in Mississippi, Ladner devoted much of her eighty-one years of life to fighting for the freedom and equality of Black Americans. Courageous and unrelenting in her mission, she learned at an early age that the American experience differs greatly depending on the color of your skin. This was made abundantly clear when Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi on August 28th, 1955 while visiting relatives. For Ladner, this was the moment that catalyzed her introduction into activism and in her words, “made her aware of her Blackness.”

Speaking about her sister shortly after her passing, Joyce Ladner recalled an encounter they had when they were about 12 years old. They were at a neighborhood store buying doughnuts when the clerk came up to Dorie and slapped her behind. She reacted by beating him with the bag of doughnuts in her hand. This experience is not only an example of Ladner’s courage and belief in right and wrong, but it also further proved to her the need for a civil rights movement and change. Furthermore, it precipitated her involvement in civil rights activism, serving as a founding moment in her life-long dedication.

Natural Born Rebel

Born June 28th, 1942 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, from an early age Dorie Ladner exhibited a predisposition to activism. Her mother, homemaker Annie Woullard Ladner raised her and her seven siblings that they were as good as anybody. In an interview for the Southern Oral History Program in 2011, Ladner and Joyce spoke about how their mother would always tell them to look a white man in the eyes when speaking to him, to not blink, and never look down. Growing up in the South in a heavily segregated state, this challenged society’s continued attempts to deprive Black Americans of humanity and self-worth.

Ladner and her family resided in Palmer’s Crossing, a Black American community just outside Hattiesburg that played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement. Joining the Hattiesburg NAACP Youth Council in 1958, activists like Clyde Kennard, who served as the advisor and Vernon Dahmer, who was the president of the Forrest Country branch, became mentors to her. Through these connections, Ladner saw first hand the at times fatal injustices perpetrated against Black Americans. She witnessed Kennard’s numerous attempts to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now known as the University of Southern Mississippi) in 1959 and subsequent false imprisonment. In her interview with the Southern Oral History Program, Ladner called the Kennard case a perfect example of how white authority would fabricate a charge “just to take someone out of the landscape where he’s beginning to work with Black youth.”

The Privilege of Education

As a student at Jackson State University (then known as Jackson State College), Ladner likewise developed a mentorship with Medgar Evers, at the time president of the Mississippi NAACP. During this time, she and Joyce would meet with Evers on trips to Jackson every Wednesday, during which they would discuss their need and want for freedom. In 1961, a group of nine students from nearby Tougaloo College, who were also members of the NAACP Youth Council, organized a protest on March 27th to integrate the public library in downtown Jackson. The group read books that were not available to them or the community in their library, highlighting the inequities in access to education. When told to leave, the group refused and were consequently arrested for “disturbing the peace.”

After encouragement from Evers to support the group, Ladner and Joyce organized a prayer vigil that brought out hundreds of people. Ladner and her sister were consequently expelled from JSU. They would go on to enroll at Tougaloo College, which unlike JSU, was more tolerant toward student activism. Though she matriculated in 1961, Ladner would not graduate with her B.A. in history until 1973 as she dropped out three times to devote her time to the civil rights movement, Putting her education on pause was an example of how committed Ladner was to actively fighting for the rights of Black people, saying to her sister Joyce, “I can’t study while our people are suffering.” This not only illustrated how education for Black Americans was not a right, but a privilege, and the sacrifices many activists were willing to make to ensure that it became an accessible right to all.

Dorie Ladner during Keep on Pushing interview. January 30, 2017. Jpaillere34. Wikimedia Commons.

Introduction to Nonviolence As An Act of Liberation

She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which had formed out of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SLCL) and was made up of young Black activists. With SNCC, Ladner participated in numerous campaigns to integrate public accommodations and register disenfranchised Black voters, among them voting and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Ladner’s work meant she often faced violence and the threat of being jailed. She was first arrested in 1961 for picketing. Following the lead of the four college students who protested the lunch counter of the Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, Ladner along with Charles Bracey, organized a protest in support of desegregation at their local store. Like other students across the South, they were arrested. Upon being released, Ladner transitioned further into activism, becoming a founding member of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO).

Led by Robert Moses, the coalition was composed of civil rights organizations like SNCC, SLCL, and the NAACP that focused on voter registration and education. Ladner played a significant role in the Mississippi Summer Project, also known as Freedom Summer in 1964, which was organized by COFO. In an interview with Southern Quality (SQ), Ladner recalled how she viewed the project as an opportunity to bring people from outside Mississippi armed with news media to “look in at us” and show the many ways they were being mistreated. When she reported to Oxford, Ohio for orientation, she was amazed at the number of people who were committed to bringing about social and political change and saw going to Mississippi as a necessary step. Yet, she was aware that some were about to encounter violence unlike any they had previously experienced.

The campaign saw large numbers of white college students traveling from the north to Mississippi to help Black Mississippians register to vote, as well as establish freedom schools and community centers. The project was not well received and resulted in church bombings, violence against civil rights workers, and the murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Ladner remembers saying bye to the group as they climbed into the blue station wagon they took to Philadelphia to survey a church that had been burned and upon learning they had been murdered, wanting to go to Southwest Mississippi, an area considered to be the most dangerous in the state due to the Ku Klux Klan.

The Tragic Consequences of Freedom Summer

Ladner’s participation in and organization of Freedom Summer, as well as her efforts to register people to vote in Natchez, Mississippi as the field director for SNCC resulted in numerous death threats, including middle of the night calls from members of the Ku Klux Klan. She was designated the role of “undercover agent” which she held for a short time until she was arrested for distributing pamphlets for voter registration and citizenship classes without a permit. In addition to being thrown in jail, the Natchez police department stole money and a diamond ring from Ladner, and put sugar in the gas tank of the car she was traveling in. After being released she went back for several days, demanding they return her property.

On the evening of June 11th, 1963, Ladner and other organizers, along with Lena Horne, Floyd Patterson, and Evers had a meeting in Jackson, Mississippi. Following dinner after, Evers departed from the group, saying he would see them in the morning. In the early hours of June 12th, he was murdered. The pain and anger Ladner carried due to her work in the civil rights movement was compounded upon his assassination. She and fellow activists went to a masonic temple that day where she confronted two police officers. She demanded to know where they were when Evers was shot in the back.

SNCC veteran Dorie Ladner at the convening called "Power of Protest: Lessons of Vietnam" in Washington, DC on May 1, 2015. Photo by Deborah Menkart. Dmenkart. Wikimedia Commons.

Business As Usual

Despite the relentless threat of violence and the loss of comrades and mentors, Ladner did not back down from her activist work. During Evers’ funeral, she and other activists like James Bevel, Diane Nash, and Bernard Lafayette asked their police escort to carry his body past the Capitol building. They instead stopped at the funeral home, which incensed the group. In her SQ interview, Ladner shared she responded by singing “This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine, all on north capitol street,” and running towards the Capitol. She viewed their dismissal of the request as yet further disregard for the life of a Black American and an attempt to present his death, which she referred to as an act of terrorism, as business as usual.

The funeral turned into a demonstration and Ladner found herself arrested again. She and many other attendees were taken to the fairgrounds. During the arrests, she had hidden in her show film belonging to the photographer who had been documenting the funeral and ensuing events. Ladner refused to turn it over to the police officers, but when they threatened to hold her in a sweat box during a day where the temperature had reached 106 degrees, she surrendered the film. Upon doing so, she was told she should be ashamed of herself for allowing “outsiders” to get her in trouble. This statement from the police officers invites various arguments, the first being that she would be embarrassed for even attempting to ask for the same rights afforded to white Americans. Furthermore, it stripped Ladner of agency, insinuating that she was brainwashed.

Marching for Rights: 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Evers’ death became the catalyst for the planning of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In August, Ladner and her sister made their way to New York City, staying with Rochelle Horowitz of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), on the same floor of Bayard Rustin. Ladner worked in the SNCC office organizing and fundraising, while her sister worked in the headquarters for the march. In an interview for the SNCC Legacy Project, Ladner recalls how the day before the march she arrived in Washington, D.C., stepping into the anticipation that filled the city. The next day though, she learned of an attack against three SNCC workers in Georgia, resulting in Ladner and others going to the Department of Justice at 5am to protest.

In the same interview Ladner shared that backstage at the Lincoln Memorial she, James and Mildred Forman, Courtland Cox, Eleanor Holmes, and John Lewis were told by Archbishop O’Boyle that Lewis’ speech would have to be cut. She said, “After negotiating about the content of the speech, we finally relented and changed it.” While Ladner spoke about the unbelievable experience of seeing and hearing a crowd of that size, she did critique Martin Luther King Jr. 's speech, stating that she and others felt it didn’t address many of the issues they had brought up.

“For me, as a daughter of Mississippi, the March helped to stir my thoughts about where the rest of my life was headed.”

— Dorie Ladner

Two weeks after the March on Washington, the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing occurred in Birmingham. Ladner, along with others like Jeannine Herron, Joan Trumpauer, and Ed King attended the funeral for Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, the four girls who tragically lost their lives in yet another instance of violence and disregard for Black lives. Driving back after the funeral, Ladner and her companions came across police officers who had their guns trained on them. The officers pulled them over and took them to jail because they resembled the church bombers. Ladner called this experience one of the most horrendous of her life.

The Work Continues: Organizing for Mental Health and Anti-War

Ladner continued her activism well into the late 1960s and 1970s. An early advocate for civil and equal rights in housing and employment having participated in the March on Washington which demanded an end to the discrimination Black Americans experienced in both, it’s no surprise that she became a community organizer for the Human Development Corporation’s anti-poverty program in St. Louis Missouri. Beginning in 1969 until 1970, Ladner helped collect documentation from Black Americans who had participated in the Civil Rights Movement. These archives are now housed in the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, a reminder of those who bravely fought for civil rights. During this time, Ladner also worked in the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, respectively.

After finally receiving her B.A. degree from Tougaloo College in 1973 and the birth of her daughter Yodit Churnet, Ladner moved to Washington D.C., where she enrolled in the Howard University School of Social Work. She earned her master’s degree and went on to practice as a licensed independent clinical social worker (LICSW) in the emergency room of D.C. General Hospital for 28 years. Though this was a change from her time distributing fliers, marching, and coming face to face with police officers, Ladner’s career as a clinical social worker was a continuation of her caring for those in need. She provided supportive intervention and counseling, as well as working with local schools, the Fire Department, and the Rape Crisis Center. When the hospital closed in 2000, Ladner continued in the mental health profession, working for the District of Columbia’s mental health program at St. Elizabeths Hospital. .

In 2014, 41 years after receiving her B.A., Ladner received an honorary doctorate from Tougaloo College, an incredible tribute to someone who had paused her education decades before to fight for the collective future of Black Americans. For her tireless and unending devotion to the Civil Rights Movement, Ladner was awarded the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy Humanitarian Award in 2011. She continued her activism well into her 70s, organizing anti-war activities as a social and political activist and participating in public speaking engagements nationwide where she would speak about the Civil Rights Movement and address contemporary social justice issues.

A Formidable Legacy

Upon her death, Ladner left an indelible legacy. In Natchez, Mississippi in 2015, October 23rd was designated Dorie Ladner Day as a tribute to her fearless and resolute acts of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience in the city. She was one of the first activists to enter Natchez to register Black Americans to vote during a time when according to Bobby Dennis, the executive director of the Natchez Museum of African American Culture and History, Ku Klux Klan activity had intensified.

On July 1st, 2024, Ladner and her sister Joyce were honored with a marker on the Mississippi Freedom Trail in their hometown of Hattiesburg. The marker, placed at 507 Mobile Street, is located in the Sixth Street Museum District, neighboring the African American Military History Museum and the Eureka School. In a full circle moment, the marker also happens to be located where the Woods Guest House once stood. The house was not only the site of the COFO offices and headquarters of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, but was also a hotel for African Americans. The unveiling occurred as Mississippi commemorated the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer, a reminder of the roles both women played in the planning and execution of the campaign and an invitation to learn about the struggles for equality and justice.

About the author: Karla Méndez (she/her) is currently a student at Brown University, pursuing a master’s in American Studies. She recently graduated from the University of Central Florida, where she majored in Interdisciplinary Studies with a double minor in Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research interests include Black feminist histories and movements, Black American literature, Black and Latina cultural productions, and social structures. When she isn’t studying, she fills up her time with books. She also enjoys watching 90s and early 00s films, drawing, and journaling. You can follow her on Instagram at @kmmendez.

“I can’t study while our people are suffering.”: The Lifelong Activism of Dorie Ladner