Bob Zellner is still active as a civil rights activist and as a true scholar. Please, read further to find out more about his life, social and professional achievements and much more.

On February 2,2002 Bob Zellner was awarded a Doctor of Laws degree from St. Josephs College, here in Long Island.

February 2, 2002
Commencement ceremony, St. Joseph's College, Patchogue, New York.
"To whom much is given, much is expected"
It is indeed an honor to be with you today, graduating students and families, faculty,
administration, fellow honorees, community leaders, and friends of the college. For this honor you give me today, I thank you and my mother thanks you..." To read the full text of Bob's Doctotal Speach, please go here.

Education/ Academic Career
Employment/ Awards
Biographical Sketch

Education
TULANE UNIVERSITY
Ph.D. Candidate, History Department, 1991 to present
WHITE LUNG ASSOCIATION, MD.
Asbestos Management Planner and Inspector, 1985 to 1986
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY
Graduate work in Sociology, 1963 to 196
5HUNTINGDON COLLEGE, Montgomery, Alabama
BA - Sociology, 1957 - 1961

Areas of Specialization
A History of American Activism
Modern American History - from the Civil War to the present
United States Southern History
African-American History: Black leaders and Movements
Labor History
Women's History - Leaders and Movements from Abolition to the Present
Introductory African History

Current Research and Writing
Bob Zellner has completed the bulk of the archival work for a dissertation entitled Memories of a White Southerner in the Civil Rights Movement. He has received offers of publication from North Carolina Press, Illinois Press and New York University Press and is currently negotiating through the agent for a publishing contract with Viking Press. David Halberstam, currently writing a book about the early SNCC members who came out of Nashville Tennessee, serves as his advisor on adapting the history dissertation for publication. This work is based on the experiences as the first white southerner to serve as a field secretary for a major civil rights organization of the sixties, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, as well as archival work in his family's papers. Preparation of the book manuscript also involves extensive work in the archives of the King Center where Bob's personal papers and the records of SNCC are presently housed, the Amistad Center at Tulane University, and the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society, which holds most of the personal papers as well as collections from SNCC and SCEF, the Southern Conference Education Fund.

Academic Career
1997-98 Southampton College of Long Island University, Adjunct Professor of American History in the Friends World Program
1990-97 Tulane University Teaching Fellow, Dissertation research and writing - Memoir of The Southern Civil Rights Movement
1980-90 Colleges and Universities - Lecturer on the Civil Rights Movement
1963-65 Brandeis University Graduate work in the Sociology of Race Relations in America
1957-61 Huntingdon College BA Psychology and Sociology

Current Position
Adjunct Professor of History, Southampton College of Long Island University
Ph.D. Candidate Department of History Tulane University
New Orleans, LA 70118 504 862-8615

Employment
SOUTHAMTON COLLEGE OF LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY
Teaching the American History of Activism Since World War Two, Friends World Program
TULANE UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
Teaching Fellow, Ph.D. Candidate, 1991 to present
Teaching American history, 1865 to the Present. Lecturing on Southern and Civil Rights history. Teaching assistant for Civil War history and Medieval history.
Research and writing for dissertation on the Southern Civil Rights Movement.
WHEELOCK COLLEGE, SIMMONS COLLEGE, AND MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY - Organized an academic conference, Race and Racism in the 90's: Teaching Social Justice, Living Social Justice, Spring 1997 NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS COORDINATING COMMITTEE
Founder and Co-Chair, 1994 to present
Serve as National spokesperson, organizer and fund raiser.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY DUBOIS CENTER
Civil Rights speaker and panelist for the summer program, 1995.
Teaching Endowment for the Humanities fellows (College and University Professors) methodology of teaching the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
PROGRAM CORPORATION OF AMERICA
College and University Lecturer, 1991 to the present.
MARTIN LUTHER KING MUSEUM, ATLANTA, GA, SWEET AUBURN PROJECT
Civil Rights specialist, 1994 to completion for the Atlanta Olympic Games.
Consultant to architectural designer and project manager, Ralph Applebaum Associates.
GREATER TALENT NETWORK - Lecturer, 1989 to 1991
National lecture tour as a participant in the events depicted in the movie Mississippi Burning relating experiences from the Civil Rights Movement. Nominated for lecturer of the year by member colleges of the National Association for Campus Activities.
WHITE LUNG ASSOCIATION, NJ - Principle Instructor, 1986 to 1989
EPA Training Program for Management Planners and Inspectors in the Asbestos control industry.
FILM MAKER - 1980 to 1991
Eyes On The Prize - Consultant and resource person
Seguin - Best Boy, lighting
Los Marielitos (Cuba) - Location Supervisor
African Women (Mozambique) - Script Supervisor
Fundi (The Story of Ella Baker) - Location director for Mississippi segments.
UNITED FARM WORKERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE - Consultant, 1979 to 1980
DEEP SOUTH EDUCATION AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATES - President, 1967 to 1979
Director of residential workshop and educational center based in New Orleans conducting grass roots organizing work in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE (SNCC)
Field Secretary, 1961 to 1967
Campus Speaker, National fund raiser, Organizer in Albany, GA, McComb, Miss., Philadelphia, Miss., Montgomery, Ala., Danville, VA., and Selma, Ala.

Community Service
Southampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force Nominating Committee, Speakers Bureau
National Civil Rights Coordinating Committee Co-Chairperson with Julian Bond
New York Chapter, NCRCC Co-Chairperson with Melissa Arch-Walton
Coalition for Justice, Southampton College Volunteer
Have a Heart Community Trust Volunteer

Teaching Experience
Southampton College, LIU, September, 1997 to the present
Tulane University, September, 1993-97
New York State BOCES, Fall 1985-89
National Lecture tours, 1975-85
Deep South Education and Research Associates, 1967-75
Freedom School of Greenwood, Mississippi summer of 1964
Brandies University, September, 1963 to Spring, 1965, Graduate student lectures
SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) nonviolent workshops, 1961-67

Awards and Fellowships
Huntingdon College Ministerial Scholarship 1957-61
Sigma Sigma Sigma Honor Society 1961
Campus Traveler Grant, Southern Conference Education Fund 1961-63
Marion Davis Scholarship (for graduate study Brandeis University) 1963-65
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, grant for adult education project of DSERA 1967-73

New York Foundation Education grant 1973
Lecturer of the Year nomination NACA 1990
Marion Davis Research Fellowship 1991-93
Tulane University Graduate Assistant Fellowship 1993-95
Teaching Fellowship 1995-96
Ph.D. Dissertation Research and Writing Fellowship 1996-97

Biography
Born and raised in south Alabama, the second of five boys belonging to Methodist minister James Abraham Zellner and school teacher Ruby Hardy Zellner. Bob Zellner graduated Murphy High School in Mobile in 1957, and Huntingdon College in Montgomery in 1961, with a BA in Sociology and Psychology, he worked at Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. In the fall of 1961 he became the first white southerner to serve as a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, (SNCC). From '61 to '67, in typical SNCC fashion, Bob was arrested 25 times in five states. Working in McComb, Miss., Albany, Ga., Danville, Va., Talladeega, Montgomery, and Birmingham, Alabama, as well as New Haven, Conn., and Boston, and was charged with everything from criminal anarchy in Louisiana to "inciting the black population to acts of war and violence against the white population." A graduate student from 1963 to 1965, Zellner studied race relations in the Department of Sociology at Branders University. During Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 he traveled with Rita Schwerner while conducting part of SNCC's and CORE's investigation of the disappearance of her husband Mickey, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman.
When SNCC, pronounced "Snick," became an all black organization in 1967, Bob joined the staff of the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) to organize an anti-racism project for black and white workers in the deep south called Grass Roots Organizing Work (GROW), a.k.a. GET RID OF WALLACE. GROW developed a residential educational facility in New Orleans and organized the Gulfcoast Pulpwood Association while working in Laurel, Mississippi and across the deep south with black and white Masonite factory workers and wood cutters. In 1972, following Nixon's ping pong diplomacy, Bob Zellner spent six weeks in China visiting paper plants, studying pulpwood harvesting, and lecturing at the National Institute for Minorities in Peking on SNCC and anti-racism work in the white community.
During the 1980s he worked on documentary and feature films, traveling to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and Mexico. When the film Mississippi Burning distorted the role of the FBI in the civil rights movement Bob toured college campuses lecturing on the real history of the movement. (J. Edgar and the FBI were not heroes of the movement.) In 1991 he started a Ph.D. program in History at Tulane University, writing a dissertation on the southern civil rights movement.
While dissertating, Bob Zellner finds time to teach a course on the History of Activism at Southampton College of Long Island University in the Friends World Program. Julian Bond and Bob tour college campuses organizing the National Civil Rights Coordinating Committee. Also he works with local organizations like the Anti-Bias Task Force.

URL: www.bobzellner.com
Last modified: February, 2007
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