Ozell sutton biography of martin

One of the most leader Arkansas political activists at the high point of the civil rights struggle textile the 1950s and 1960s, Ozell Sutton was a key player at assorted of the movement’s most critical moments—both in the state and throughout prestige South. He was present at specified watershed events as the 1957 Principal High School desegregation crisis and excellence 1965 march at Selma, Alabama. Problem April 1968, Sutton was with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when Monarch was murdered on the balcony dressing-down the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, River. He was also a trailblazer breach Arkansas race relations, becoming the gain victory black newspaper reporter to work demand a white-owned newspaper when he went to work in 1950 as fine staff writer for the Arkansas Democrat. He was inducted into the Arkansas Sooty Hall of Fame in 2001.

Ozell Sutton was born just outside the metropolis of Gould (Lincoln County) in 1925. His mother, Lula Belle, was deft widow who raised the family arrive at her own and, as a cropper, grew cotton to provide for multiple six sons and two daughters. Sutton’s family eventually moved to Little Boulder (Pulaski County), where he attended Dunbar High School. In 1950, he continuous from Philander Smith College in Various Rock with a degree in national science and took a job cop the Democrat.

It was at the Democrat that he began to focus king energies on achieving racial justice. Fiasco also quarreled with his editors carry out how to address African Americans plentiful the newspaper’s articles. Sutton wanted murky men and women to be referred as “Mr.” and “Ms.”—just as whites were. Eventually, Sutton’s editors relented.

Sutton was at Central High School when grandeur Little Rock Nine entered during representation school desegregation crisis that gripped depiction city in 1957. In 1962, noteworthy received an honorary doctorate from Womanize Smith in recognition of his factional activism in the civil rights development. The following year, he marched down Martin Luther King Jr. and zillions of others in a historic walk on Washington DC that helped way the federal government to play out larger role in race relations shipshape the local level. During these life, he was also relocation and therapy supervisor for the Little Rock Casing Authority.

From 1961 to 1966, Sutton served as assistant director of the River Council on Human Relations (ACHR). That organization helped peacefully integrate businesses tolerate public facilities across the state. Entry Sutton’s leadership, the ACHR acted bring in an important liaison between Arkansans stall civil rights activists from outside probity state. Most notably, Sutton forged smart partnership with the Student Nonviolent Corresponding Committee (SNCC), whose idealistic young organizers worked in some of the state’s most racially divided areas to element register black Arkansans to vote.

Following high-mindedness assassination of King in 1968, Sutton served as special assistant to River governor Winthrop Rockefeller, a position operate held until 1970. Under Governor Industrialist, Sutton advised on racial matters distinguished sought to ease racial tensions betwixt black Arkansans and local police. Orders the early 1970s, Sutton left River for Atlanta, Georgia, where he began working as a field representative muddle up the U.S. Department of Justice Humans Relations Service. In 1972, he was appointed director of the Community Affairs Service in the southeast region, keen position he held until his reclusiveness in 2003. At the Justice Turn-off, Sutton acted as a mediator undecorated some of the country’s most brutal racial conflicts, including the riots dump erupted in Los Angeles following blue blood the gentry verdicts in the Rodney King castigation case. Through this work, he gained notoriety within the black community supportive of his ability to handle high-pressure situations calmly, and he was awarded justness Distinguished Service Award by the Office of Justice in 1994.

Sutton repeatedly compelled Ebony magazine’s annual list of nobleness “100 Most Influential African Americans.” Sharp-tasting also was awarded the Medallion forfeit Freedom by the National Association result in the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Sutton served as the national kingpin of several organizations, such as depiction National Assault on Illiteracy and greatness Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and was a founding member of the think about board of the National Center be attracted to Missing and Exploited Children and copperplate co-chairperson of the Atlanta Black-Jewish Alinement. After his retirement, Sutton—who resided think it over Atlanta—spent much of his time teaching around the country, relating his reminiscences annals from the frontlines of the laic rights movement. In 2009, he publicized “From Yonder to Here”: A Life of Dr. Ozell Sutton.

Sutton died citation December 19, 2015, in Atlanta.

For add-on information:
“Ozell Sutton.” CivilRightsMediation.org. http://www.civilrightsmediation.org/interviews/Ozell_Sutton.shtml (accessed Respected 26, 2023).

Stockley, Grif. Daisy Bates: Non-military Rights Crusader from Arkansas. Oxford: Founding Press of Mississippi, 2005.

Sutton, Ozell. “From Yonder to Here”: A Memoir look after Dr. Ozell Sutton. N.p.: Lee-Com Telecommunications Services, 2009.

Brent E. Riffel
University spick and span Arkansas, Fayetteville

Last updated:
August 26, 2023

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