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Patricia Due on left, Judith Brown third from left. (Image courtesy of the Redstockings Women’s Liberation Archives for Action.)
JUDITH BROWN
FREEDOM FIGHTER From 2011 Memorial program for Judith Brown Judith Benninger Brown (1941-1991) was a leading figure of the Southern Civil Rights struggle and an internationally recognized pioneer of the worldwide feminist revival from the 1960’s until 1991. In 1968, as a Ford Foundation Fellowship winning graduate of the UF Master’s program in English, her thesis on Zora Neale Hurston was an early step toward the rediscovery of this remarkable southern writer. When Judith was convicted of contempt for defying an injunction against mass picketing to integrate a racially segregated movie
theatre, UF expelled her and took away her Ford Fellowship. After protest, she was reinstated. In 1963, Judith went to work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) under the leadership of Patricia Stephens Due in North Florida. In CORE’s “Big Bend Voter Registration Project,” she helped to secure needed funding and resources for project organizers. When the project ended in 1965, North Florida saw more newly registered black voters than any other region in the south. She was arrested and jailed repeatedly in this work.
