Too Proud to Bend:
Journey of a Civil Rights Foot Soldier
Nell Braxton Gibson
Book contrasts author’s childhood experiences in an
integrated summer camp to life in the deeply
segregated South and chronicles her passionate and growing involvement in
the
Civil Rights movement in the twentieth century and
beyond
Nell Braxton
Gibson’s newly published memoir Too Proud to Bend: Journey of a
Civil Rights Foot Soldier reflects her upbringing in the twentieth
century Deep South, her profound and consuming response to the evils of
segregation, and her awareness that the haunting and horrific 1955 murder
of Emmett Till is reflected today in the ongoing murders of black men and
boys at the hands of police.
Gibson was just fourteen months old when her family fled
a race riot in Beaumont, Texas. She was sixteen when her parents sent her
and her younger sister from their home in deeply segregated Mississippi to
an integrated camp in New York’s Catskill Mountains to give them an
experience different from the one they were living at home.
It was there at Camp Woodland that Gibson got her first
glimpse of the kind of life integration could offer. It was the memory of
that camp experience that led her to walk picket lines, register first-time
black voters, spend time in jail in Atlanta, Georgia, and devote her life
to seeking social justice and equal opportunities for all
people.
The daughter of two African American educators who
worked with civil rights leader Medgar Evers to increase membership in the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People at a time when
you could be killed for belonging to that organization, Gibson went on to
work with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and an international group of religious
leaders on a five-year plan to dismantle apartheid.
She explains, “My personal experiences provide the
background that gives a human face to historical events that later became
national headlines, seamlessly blending stories of family life with the
relentless undercurrent of the evils of segregation and the long road to
freedom.”
She adds, “Too Proud to Bend is a triumphant testament to those civil rights foot soldiers who
were willing to give their lives to bring justice and equality to a
racially torn segregated South. When people finish reading it, I want them
to know that average people like any of us can change our world for the
better.”
“This autobiography is not simply a story of one
remarkable woman’s life but rather a story of African American life
from childhood through young adulthood in the Jim Crow South…Her
story ends [with her] dancing with her longtime colleague and friend
Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the eve of Barack Obama’s first
inauguration. She closes this part of her life’s story recognizing
the goal of the Civil Rights Movement was never to elect the first African
American president but to open the avenues for social justice and equal
opportunity for all people who have been denied equal access. While this is
an intimate and moving personal history, it is much more; it is the story
of our times. History certainly matters, but for Braxton Gibson, the future
is what matters most.” ~ Review by LDT
“Critical Eye”
Author: Nell Braxton Gibson holds a bachelor of
arts degree in cultural studies from Empire State College and an Honorary
Doctor of Divinity Degree from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University.
Following her marriage and relocation to New York City, she and her husband
became members of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery’s Black and
Brown Caucus, working with members of the Black Panther Party to offer free
breakfast for children on the Lower East Side and to start a liberation
school. They also founded the first prison law library in New York State.
In the 1980s, Gibson joined the anti-apartheid movement and was among
religious leaders arrested outside the South African Consulate in New York
City. She was later chosen as one of three members of the Episcopal Church
to travel to South Africa and work with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and an
international group of religious leaders on a five-year plan to dismantle
apartheid. Her work for justice has taken her into the war zones of Namibia
and Nicaragua, the Gaza Strip, the townships of apartheid South Africa, and
into Cuba, Panama, and alongside migrant workers in upstate New
York.
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Comment by email:
Thank you, Mr. Zick. Nelly Gibson
