Bob Zellner

John Robert Zellner (born April 5, 1939) is an American civil rights activist.

John Robert Zellner was born to James Abraham Zellner and Ruby Hardy Zellner on April 5, 1939, in Jay, Florida.

His relatives were involved in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and his father and grandfather were members.

Zellner's father organized for the white supremacist group but eventually left the Klan after supporting Jewish resistance in German-occupied Europe during World War II.

After James left the KKK, Zellner's grandparents disowned their son.

James then became a minister in the Methodist Church.

Zellner was educated at W. S. Neal High School in Brewton, Alabama, and Murphy High School where he graduated in 1957.

He attended Huntingdon College, which was at the time an all-white school.

While a senior there he researched "solutions to racial problems in the South" as a sociology assignment.

For the paper Zellner and four others wanted to interview civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy.

They told their professor they planned to visit King and Abernathy at the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).

He responded by suggesting they visit the library or conduct field research through the KKK or white citizens' council, and told the five it "won't be necessary" to study multiple points of view in the issue of race.

The five disregarded his instructions and discussed civil rights with students at the Alabama State College for Negroes and visited the MIA's offices.

The group ended up interviewing King, Rosa Parks, and E. D. Nixon, catalyzing Zellner's interest in the civil rights movement.

The white community did not approve, and Zellner had crosses burned outside his dorm by the KKK, the school suggested his expulsion, and the Attorney General of Alabama accused him of communism.

He graduated from Huntingdon College in 1961 and that year became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as its first white field secretary.

Zellner's interest in the movement grew, and he helped Freedom Riders who were under attack by white supremacists in May 1961.

Zellner graduated from Huntingdon with a degree in psychology and sociology later that year.

Zellner later studied for a summer at the Highlander Folk School and two years at Brandeis University but did not graduate.

Through his meetings over civil rights Zellner had been introduced to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a student-led civil rights organization.

He was contacted by Anne Braden and soon hired to "conduct outreach to whites", becoming a formal volunteer on September 11, 1961.

He was SNCC's first and, for the first year he worked, only white field secretary.

As a civil rights activist, Zellner was beaten unconscious several times, leading to brain damage and post-traumatic stress disorder.

He was severely beaten by white men after protesting the murder of Herbert Lee, as well as the expulsion of Brenda Travis and Ike Lewis from Burglund High School.

Police officers and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents watched the beating occur.

Zellner was briefly involved in running a high school for students who had dropped out of Burglund in protest.

He was arrested on December 10, 1961, during the Albany Movement when he sat in an integrated group on a train.

Hundreds protested the arrest, including almost three hundred who marched while they were on trial.

In 1962 Zellner and Chuck McDew visited Dion Diamond, an imprisoned Freedom Rider in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The two were arrested, held for a month, and charged with criminal anarchy.

Zellner was arrested again in January 1963 at Huntingdon College on charges of vagrancy, which was later changed to false pretenses.

He was defended against a possible ten year sentence by Clifford Durr and Charles Morgan Jr., and acquitted.

After the Children's March in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 turned violent, Zellner and other activists went to the city.

He attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Zellner was involved in numerous civil rights efforts, including nonviolence workshops at Talladega College, protests for integration in Danville, Virginia, and organizing Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1964.

He also investigated the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner that summer.

Zellner was arrested and severely beaten for his activism several times.

He left SNCC in 1966 but continued his civil rights activism.

Zellner was arrested as recently as 2013, for protesting a North Carolina voter ID law.

He later taught the history of the civil rights movement at Long Island University and published a memoir of his activism that was adapted into the 2020 film Son of the South, with Lucas Till portraying him.