Civil Rights Legend Professor Helen O'Neal-McCray & Presidential Election
Just days before the nation’s most historic election came to a close; Prof. Hellen Jean O’Neal-McCray reveled in thoughts of “the most exciting days of my life.” That’s when the 19-year-old college sophomore turned civil rights activist and Freedom Rider knew that she had to crisscross her native Mississippi, possibly risk her life, walk picket lines, and be jailed to ensure that Blacks had the right to vote.
Today the 65-year old Wilberforce English and literature professor says that those lean, angry, and sometimes frightening years were worth the struggle.
Barack Obama’s run for the highest office in the land and ultimate victory, “…is a direct result of what people did in the 60s,” says O’Neal-McCray as memories of the people and events of the civil rights struggle came flooding back.
O’Neal-McCray never dreamed then as she marched through southern segregated streets of Macomb, MS and Shreveport, LA, of ever “seeing an African-American run for president and win his parties nomination.
“This election is the end product of what we worked for,” adds O’Neal-McCray who, while a student at Jackson State University, was a voter registration field worker for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). After graduation in 1963, she fanned out across Mississippi to become teacher at a SNCC Freedom School where she taught literacy skills to Blacks who needed to know how to read before they were allowed to vote. A third-grade reading level was the standard for most whites in the early 1960s said O’Neal-McCray.
Those who attempted to register Blacks to vote and Blacks who tried to cast their ballot did so at great peril, she recalled. “Those are the people who I think about and I think about often.”
O’Neal-McCray’s work in the movement landed her in jail. Her historic black and white police mug shot from a Mississippi jail has since earned O’Neal-McCray the title “ Wilberforce University’s most wanted” from students who have stumbled on her past. O’Neal-McCray is among more than 100 Freedom Riders featured in the new book Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders” and in the documentary, Freedom Riders: The Children Shall Lead, produced by The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi.
While O’Neal-McCray considers herself an ordinary person who made history, she counted among her friends in the movement those who went on to take center stage in civil rights, politics, and social justice – Children’s Defense Fund Founder Marion Wright
Edelman; former Washington, DC Mayor Marion Barry, and S NCC Cha irman Stokely Carmichael.
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