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16. My Arkansas Journey
- University of Arkansas Press
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16. My Arkansas Journey ARLENE (WILGOREN) DUNN A Boston native, Arlene (Wilgoren) Dunn studied mathematics at Brandeis University and later earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Dunn spent more than a year working in the Pine Bluff and Little Rock offices of the SNCC Arkansas Project. Since then she continued her activism as a member of a variety of organizations, including People Against Racism (PAR) and the Race Relations Council of Northern Indiana. She also enjoyed a successful career in the airline industry, ultimately working as director of financial analysis at Midway Airlines. This is a story of how the experience of working in the civil rights movement of the 1960s completely transformed the life of a Jewish girl from Boston. I worked for SNCC in Arkansas for fifteen months in 1964 and 1965. Although this was a short period of time, its impact was profound and is still with me, nearly forty-five years later. This journey actually began seven years earlier, fittingly enough, with a triggering event that occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the fall of 1957 I was a high school sophomore in Boston, attending a city-wide college preparatory school. Although I lived in a very homogenous Jewish community, I attended school with a more diverse student body. When the Little Rock Nine students attempted to integrate Central High School I was shocked to see TV news footage of angry white mobs and the Arkansas National Guard preventing them from entering the building. Here I was receiving an excellent education in a safe environment, while there were teenagers, like me in all ways except my 160 skin color, being refused what I took for granted. Later in life, when I came to understand more about white privilege, I read a quote from Robert Terry, author of several books on race, including On Being White and For Whites Only that could describe me: “Being white in America is not having to think about it.” In February of 1960 I participated in my first civil rights action when I was a freshman at Brandeis University. A group of students demonstrated at the Woolworth’s in Harvard Square in support of the lunch counter student sit-ins in the South. After graduating from Brandeis, I moved to New York City and became quite active with the New York SNCC office, which was primarily involved in fundraising to support the organizing and action campaigns in the South. Early in 1964 plans were solidified for the 1964 Freedom Summer, which was to bring one thousand (mostly Caucasian) students from the North to participate in voter registration drives in Mississippi . As I was no longer a student, it did not occur to me to join this effort. I was content to provide support through volunteer work in the New York office. We were a dedicated group—young folks willing to do just about anything, from menial tasks such as stuffing envelopes to calling people asking for financial support. Excitement about the summer project built over the spring months, and we raised a lot of money. There were times when I was tempted to join up, as the excitement was very contagious. But I had held my job only eight or nine months, so taking a few months off seemed out of the question. Then the fateful day in June occurred when news of the disappearance of three civil rights workers—James Chaney, a black youth from Mississippi, and two white northern volunteers, Andy Goodman and Mike Schwerner —came to light. The New York SNCC office placed a full-page ad in the New York Times and donations began pouring in. Hate mail also arrived. One evening I opened a letter containing extremely vile statements and a specimen of feces. That did it for me. I decided then and there that I was not going to stay away out of fear or hate. I spoke with Julie Prettyman, the director of the New York office, about the possibility of my going despite the fact that I had not participated in the volunteer training, which included important exercises in methods of nonviolent demonstrations. She reported back that I could go to the Atlanta office, SNCC national headquarters , and request an assignment, but that there was no guarantee that I would indeed be placed. Within a week I had quit my job, walked out on my apartment lease, got rid of most of my stuff, and was...