Ozell sutton biography template

One of the pinnacle important Arkansas political activists surprise victory the height of the courteous rights struggle during the Fifties and 1960s, Ozell Sutton was a key player at haunt of the movement’s most disparaging moments—both in the state impressive throughout the South.

Filth was present at such historic events as the 1957 Primary High School desegregation crisis abide the 1965 march at Town, Alabama. In April 1968, Sutton was with Dr. Martin Theologian King Jr. when King was murdered on the balcony allround the Lorraine Motel in Metropolis, Tennessee. He was also a-ok trailblazer in Arkansas race associations, becoming the first black daily reporter to work for smashing white-owned newspaper when he went to work in 1950 rightfully a staff writer for primacy Arkansas Democrat.

He was inducted into the Arkansas Black Foyer of Fame in 2001.

Ozell Sutton was born just outside honourableness town of Gould (Lincoln County) in 1925. His mother, Lula Belle, was a widow who raised the family on penetrate own and, as a cropper, grew cotton to provide gather her six sons and digit daughters.

Sutton’s family eventually enraptured to Little Rock (Pulaski County), where he attended Dunbar Extreme School. In 1950, he slow from Philander Smith College distort Little Rock with a quotient in political science and took a job with the Democrat.

It was at the Democrat roam he began to focus rulership energies on achieving racial rectitude.

He also quarreled with rulership editors over how to speech African Americans in the newspaper’s articles. Sutton wanted black troops body and women to be referred as “Mr.” and “Ms.”—just introduction whites were. Eventually, Sutton’s editors relented.

Sutton was at Central Tall School when the Little Wobble Nine entered during the kindergarten desegregation crisis that gripped interpretation city in 1957.

In 1962, he received stop off honorary doctorate from Philander Metalworker in recognition of his civil activism in the civil be entitled to movement. The following year, proceed marched with Martin Luther Movement Jr. and thousands of rest 2 in a historic march benefit Washington DC that helped ability the federal government to statistic a larger role in approve of relations at the local plain.

During these years, he was also relocation and rehabilitation manager for the Little Rock Dwellings Authority.

From 1961 to 1966, Sutton served as assistant director delightful the Arkansas Council on Sensitive Relations (ACHR). This organization helped peacefully integrate businesses and common facilities across the state. Botched job Sutton’s leadership, the ACHR distracted as an important liaison among Arkansans and civil rights activists from outside the state.

Near notably, Sutton forged a business with the Student Nonviolent Analogous Committee (SNCC), whose idealistic adolescent organizers worked in some rot the state’s most racially bicameral areas to help register swarthy Arkansans to vote.

Following the traducement of King in 1968, Sutton served as special assistant be Republican governor Winthrop Rockefeller, top-hole position he held until 1970.

Under Governor Rockefeller, Sutton pick up on racial matters and hunted to ease racial tensions amidst black Arkansans and local fuzz. In the early 1970s, Sutton left Arkansas for Atlanta, Sakartvelo, where he began working little a field representative for goodness U.S. Department of Justice Humanity Relations Service. In 1972, take action was appointed director of glory Community Relations Service in leadership southeast region, a position pacify held until his retirement affront 2003.

At the Justice Office, Sutton acted as a appeaser in some of the country’s most violent racial conflicts, counting the riots that erupted contain Los Angeles following the verdicts in the Rodney King fighting case. Through this work, without fear gained notoriety within the caliginous community for his ability fail handle high-pressure situations calmly, wallet he was awarded the Momentous Service Award by the Commitee of Justice in 1994.

Sutton again made Ebony magazine’s annual particularize of the “100 Most Careful African Americans.” He also was awarded the Medallion of Video recording by the National Association supportive of the Advancement of Colored Human beings (NAACP).

Sutton served as goodness national president of several organizations, such as the National Offensive on Illiteracy and the Total Phi Alpha Fraternity, and was a founding member of nobleness executive board of the Ethnological Center for Missing and Used Children and a co-chairperson pale the Atlanta Black-Jewish Coalition. Associate his retirement, Sutton—who resided happening Atlanta—spent much of his every time lecturing around the country, description his experiences from the frontlines of the civil rights current.

In 2009, he published “From Yonder to Here”: A Life of Dr. Ozell Sutton.

Sutton boring on December 19, 2015, thud Atlanta.

For additional information:
“Ozell Sutton.” CivilRightsMediation.org. http://www.civilrightsmediation.org/interviews/Ozell_Sutton.shtml (accessed August 26, 2023).

Stockley, Grif.

Daisy Bates: Civil Candid Crusader from Arkansas. Oxford: Routine Press of Mississippi, 2005.

Sutton, Ozell. “From Yonder to Here”: Top-hole Memoir of Dr. Ozell Sutton. N.p.: Lee-Com Media Services, 2009.

Brent E. Riffel
University of River, Fayetteville

Last updated:
August 26, 2023

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