Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. - Mr Pearson's Class - Civil Rights Leader & Historian

In 1960, Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr., the 16-yr-old president of his local NAACP Youth Council, led a sit-in at a local segregated lunch counter. All this young black leader desired was basic respect and dignity. In no time, a mob of 200 angry whites showed up with axe handles, spitting and shouting epithets, in what came to be infamously known as "Axe Handle Saturday." Sixty years later, this Southern gentleman is still fighting for fairness and speaking truth to power. “When I interact with whites, I say to them, ‘When you come into my community, I don’t want you coming into my community being as black as me. You don’t understand my problems. You don’t understand the circumstances of living in a black life. You have not walked a mile in my shoes. And, I’m not gonna hold that against you. All I’m asking you to do when you come into my community, when we have conversations ... all I ask you to do is to listen to what I say and be fair. Don’t don’t try to be an expert on me,'” says Hurst, author of three award-winning books on black history--It was never about a hot dog and a Coke®! A personal account of the 1960 sit-in demonstrations in Jacksonville, Florida, and Ax Handle Saturday, Unless WE Tell It...It Never Gets Told! and Never Forget Who You Are: Conversations about Racism and Identity Development, which he co-authored with Dr. Rudy F. Jamison Jr.

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