Outside Agitator: The Civil Rights Struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr.

by Adam Parker

Overview

Cleveland Sellers Jr. was the scapegoat for one of the bloodiest civil rights events of the 1960s.

In 1968 state troopers gunned down black students protesting the segregation of a South Carolina bowling alley, killing three and injuring 28. The Orangeburg Massacre was one of the most violent moments of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, and only one person served prison time in its aftermath: a young black man by the name of Cleveland Sellers Jr. Many years later, the state would recognize that Sellers was a scapegoat in that college campus tragedy and would issue a full pardon.

*Outside Agitator* is the story of a Sellers’ early activism: organizing a lunch counter sit-in as a 15-year-old in the tiny South Carolina town of Denmark, registering voters in Alabama and Mississippi, refusing the Vietnam War draft, serving as national program director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and working alongside 1960s civil rights icons Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., H. Rap Brown and Malcolm X. It's also the story of his lifelong struggle to overcome the Orangeburg incident and his slow crawl to justice. That journey takes him to Harvard University, then to a hard-fought position in civil service in Greensboro, North Carolina. And in a triumphant end to his career, a major Southern university elevates Sellers to chair its African-American Studies program, and the historically black college in his hometown respectfully calls him to be its president.

Adam Parker’s incisive biography is about a proud black man who refuses to be defeated, whose tumultuous life story personifies America’s continuing civil rights struggle.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938235450
Publisher:	Hub City Press
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

Prologue xi

Childhood in Denmark 1

Generational Divide 13

Enter the Students 25

Initiation by Fire 41

A Turning Point 49

Atlantic City 63

In Betrayal's Wake 73

Black Power 87

In Charge 97

Refusing the Draft 107

Under Fire 115

Legal Wrangling, SNCC Chaos 145

The Trials 157

Entering a New Life 167

Off to Prison 175

Gaining Traction in Greensboro 187

Pardoned 197

Within the Establishment 205

Closing the Circle 215

Inheritance 223

Epilogue 229

Acknowledgements 237

Notes 241

Bibliography 257

Index 263

About the Author 277

Editorial Reviews

09/24/2018
Journalist Parker respectfully and accessibly tells the life story of civil rights activist Cleveland Sellers. Sellers, born in 1944, was a 10-year-old in a middle-class South Carolina black family when Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi; as a college student, he found his calling in life as a civil rights activist. Deeply involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he was both foot soldier and officer, a deeply committed witness to and hands-on participant in historic moments of the civil rights movement, such as the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and the Selma to Montgomery march. In 1968, when students at South Carolina State University protested a local segregated bowling alley, they were met with state troopers, at whose hands three black students were killed. The only person charged in the aftermath of what became known as the Orangeburg Massacre was Sellers, who, though later exonerated, was convicted of rioting and served a seven-month sentence . In the decades that followed, Sellers lived in North Carolina, continued organizing, completed his bachelor’s degree, fathered two children, added master’s and doctoral degrees to his portfolio, and ultimately became a professor of African-American studies and president of Voorhees College in South Carolina. A biography of a man who “does not seek the spotlight is content behind the scenes,” this is a worthy addition to the record of the civil rights movement. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Outside Agitator is an important, timely, and significant biography of Cleveland Sellers, one of the heroically transcendent figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Adam Parker’s crucial work helps to remind us that the struggle for racial equality continued long past the 1960s in the resilience of activists and long marchers like Sellers who helped to transform America’s ongoing democratic experiment for the good of all. A must read.

author of Stokely: A Life Peniel E. Joseph

Cleveland Sellers battled body and soul to redeem the promise of American democracy, and his story stands among the most telling and important of the civil rights generation. He took a bullet for his country—not in South Vietnam but in South Carolina, his blood winning him not a Purple Heart but a prison sentence. At age fifteen, he organized sit-ins in his hometown of Denmark, South Carolina. He labored at the heart of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, registered thousands of black sharecroppers to vote for the first time, searched the dark swamps of Mississippi for the bodies of murdered comrades, and pioneered the Black Power movement. Always an educator, he oversaw the Freedom Schools in Marshall County, Mississippi at nineteen and ended his career as a college president. This is a distinctive American story and Adam Parker’s stirring narrative brings it to life.

Timothy B. Tyson

Although little known and never one to seek attention, Cleveland Sellers is one of the true heroes of the Civil Rights movement and an important pioneer during the creation and development of the teaching of Black History in American colleges and universities. Adam Parker has done an excellent job in telling his story from time in prison to president of a college.

co-author of The Orangeburg Massacre — Jack Bass

Although little known and never one to seek attention, Cleveland Sellers is one of the true heroes of the Civil Rights movement and an important pioneer during the creation and development of the teaching of Black History in American colleges and universities. Adam Parker has done an excellent job in telling his story from time in prison to president of a college.

co-author of The Orangeburg Massacre -- Jack Bass

★ 11/01/2018
Journalist Parker (Charleston Post and Courier) provides a detailed biographical account of Cleveland Sellers Jr. (b. 1944), a critical civil rights organizer in the 1960s who worked with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, among others. If Sellers is a lesser-known figure of the era, this was partly by choice. Sellers worked behind the scenes, doing less public facing, though no less important, background organizational work in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in which he rose to high administrative posts. With vivid details, Parker unpacks Seller's upbringing and influences, portraying the realities of segregated South Carolina and presenting an ultimately compelling read about an educator and activist, from his earliest involvement in a local NAACP chapter to the flashpoint climax of his involvement in the civil rights movement, especially the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, where he was the sole person convicted and jailed for the protests that occurred. VERDICT Readers of historical biography, especially related to civil rights and social justice, will enjoy this informative work.—Jim Hahn, Univ. Lib., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

Library Journal

2018-08-13

A biography of a lesser-known but influential leader in the civil rights movement and his central role in one of its most violent events.

On Feb. 7, 1968, a protest of a segregated bowling alley in Orangeburg, South Carolina, devolved into violence. Patrolmen fired at the protesters, killing three and injuring 28. The event, dubbed the Orangeburg Massacre, has been overshadowed by other high-profile events of 1968, the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. chief among them. But journalist Parker thoughtfully pinpoints the incident as a signature moment in the civil rights movement, pivoting the narrative around Cleveland Sellers Jr. (b. 1944), an activist who was wrongly accused of inciting a riot and imprisoned for seven months. Growing up in Denmark, South Carolina, Sellers was moved to activism by the murder of Emmett Till, quickly rising up the ranks of the Southern Nonviolence Coordinating Committee and becoming close to black leaders like Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and King, who officiated his wedding. At the time of the Orangeburg Massacre, Parker explains, the movement was fraying and factionalized, split between focus on nonviolent protest and the more global emphasis on Black Power. The irony of Sellers' persecution is that he tried to discourage the Orangeburg protest, feeling that taking on one business was wasted energy. But the stigma of his conviction hung on Sellers until he was pardoned in 1993. Parker is a workmanlike reporter, and Sellers sometimes feels underdrawn, but the author weaves context about the larger movement into Sellers' story and doesn't soft-pedal his challenges: In recent years, he struggled to revitalize Voorhees College, a historically black college in his hometown, but a push for an endowment fund netted only $55,000.

An illuminating if sometimes-flat study of both a man and a decadeslong civil rights struggle.

Kirkus Reviews