The Bookplate continues their author lectures on April 17th with local author Stan Salett for a 6 pm event at The Kitchen and Pub at The Imperial Hotel.
Among so many achievements, Stan Salett was a civil rights organizer, national education advisor, creator of the Upward Bound Program, helped organize the March on Washington, served on the staff of all three Kennedy brothers, and was an advisor to the Carter and Clinton administrations.
Looking at the tumultuous political and social landscape of the early 1960s, the long struggle for civil rights emerged as a centerpiece and critical factor in shaping American life during the decade that would also bring on the war in Vietnam. Protests against segregated bussing and education, sit-ins, racially motivated bombings and murder, Freedom Riders, anger and frustration over racialized living crested and broke like a wave over the status quo.
From the 1950s on, however, the era of Rosa Parks, the Little Rock Nine Students, and nonviolent civil rights organizations like The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNICC) made inroads to challenge discrimination through direct action projects—all inspirations for Salett.
As a young graduate student majoring in history and education at Harvard, Stan Salett found himself in the epicenter of the civil rights movement, first a CORE organizer at Columbia University and then at the Department of Labor with Robert F. Kennedy.
In his book, The Edge of Politics: Stories from the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Poverty and the Challenges of School Reform, Salett writes:
“While we were pleased with our success at focusing the nation’s attention on the need to enforce federal law in public accommodations through the freedom rides, we realized our greatest challenges were outside the South. And we saw our goals as bringing about a racially integrated society, and not just one that was legally desegregated.”
The Spy recently interviewed Stan Salett about his early years in the civil rights movement, and later his time with Robert F. Kennedy. Stan resides in Chestertown.
This video is approximately thirteen minutes in length.
Vic Pfeiffer says
Very interesting insight into RFK and also one small knits & bolts effort into the “civil rights movement.” Thanks Spy & Stan.