Robert "Bob" Mants, Jr. (April 25, 1943 – December 7, 2011) was an American civil rights activist, serving as a field secretary for the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segrega ...
(SNCC). Mants moved to
Lowndes County, working for civil rights for the remainder of his life. Lowndes County contained the majority of the distance covered by the 1965
Selma to Montgomery march
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the ...
, and was then notorious for its racist violence.
Early life
Mants was born in
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
.
He graduated in 1961 from East Point/South Fulton High School,
a segregated black high school. While he was attending high school, Mants was a member of the
Committee on Appeal for Human Rights The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR) was a group of Atlanta University Center students formed in February 1960. The committee drafted and published An Appeal for Human Rights on March 9, 1960. Six days after publication of the docu ...
(which would later develop into the
Atlanta Student Movement
The Atlanta Student Movement was formed in February 1960 in Atlanta by students of the campuses Atlanta University Center (AUC). It was led by the Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR) and was part of the Civil Rights Movement.
Hi ...
) and volunteering for administrative tasks at the headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
two blocks from his home.
He would go on to attend
Morehouse College
, mottoeng = And there was light (literal translation of Latin itself translated from Hebrew: "And light was made")
, type = Private historically black men's liberal arts college
, academic_affiliations ...
with the intention of majoring in medicine,
but left without graduating, working in 1964 with SNCC in
Americus, Georgia
Americus is the county seat of Sumter County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 16,230. It is the principal city of the Americus Micropolitan Statistical Area, a micropolitan area that covers Schley an ...
. At the beginning of 1965 Mants moved to
Lowndes County, AL for his job.
Civil rights activism
While in Americus, Mants reported over the
Wide Area Telephone Service
Wide Area Telephone Service (WATS) was a flat-rate long-distance service offering for customer dial-type telecommunications in some of the countries that adhere to the North American Numbering Plan. The service was between a given customer phone ( ...
that "negro and white" mobs were forming on the evening of July 6, 1964, possibly in response to riots the evening before or the integration of two downtown restaurants earlier in the day, which had occurred without incident. Mants was working to calm and disperse the mobs. An hour later, Mants reported a drive-by shooting with no reported injuries or deaths.
Mants and
Stokely Carmichael
Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unite ...
from the SNCC first arrived in Selma to participate in the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march;
in photographs of Bloody Sunday taken by
Spider Martin, Mants can be seen wearing a patterned cap, marching next to Albert Turner just behind John Lewis after crossing the
Edmund Pettus Bridge
The Edmund Pettus Bridge carries U.S. Route 80 Business (US 80 Bus.) across the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama. Built in 1940, it is named after Edmund Pettus, a former Confederate brigadier general, U.S. senator, and state-level ...
; earlier that morning, Mants had participated in a prayer at the
Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where the march originated, with John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and
Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (born March 12, 1932) is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian L ...
. During the violent suppression on Bloody Sunday, Mants saved a woman from a possible beating and took her away from the tear gas cloud.
While marching to Montgomery in late March 1965, Mants was passing out buttons and leaflets when a resident of Lowndes County, pleased the civil rights movement was coming to her, memorably quoted
Revelation 7:9 to him.
In 1964, Lowndes County had no registered black voters, even though the county's population was predominantly black. The county was known as "Bloody Lowndes" or the rusty buckle of the
Black Belt of Alabama because of its long, violent history of whites retaliating against blacks who tried to register to vote.
When Mants and other SNCC officials began to register black voters,
the newly registered voters, many of which still lived on plantations, were made homeless by the predominantly white landowners.
Many of the displaced black residents were housed in a temporary "Tent City" and subject to intimidation over the next two years as shots were regularly fired into the encampment.
In response, SNCC set up the
Alabama Poor People's Land Fund to purchase plots of land and building materials to help the displaced black residents to build new homes.
SNCC also tried a new strategy in Lowndes County, setting up the
Lowndes County Freedom Organization
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), also known as the Lowndes County Freedom Party (LCFP) or Black Panther party, was an American political party founded during 1965 in Lowndes County, Alabama. The independent third party was formed ...
(LCFO) in 1966 as an independent Black political party, adopting a snarling black panther as its logo. LCFO would in turn inspire other leaders, such as Stokely Carmichael, who adopted the structure of LCFO for
Black Power, and
Bobby Seale
Robert George Seale (born October 22, 1936) is an American political activist and author. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton. Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", ...
and
Huey P. Newton
Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989) was an African-American revolutionary, notable as founder of the Black Panther Party. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
Under Newton's leadershi ...
, who adopted the black panther logo for the
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...
.
Mants remained in Lowndes County after the march, saying "if there was any place I wanted to raise my kids, it would be here, because they could see black people moving forward, advancing ourselves as a race." Mants served as a farm management specialist at
Tuskegee University
Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature.
The campus was d ...
.
In 1984, Mants was elected to the Lowndes County Commission, unseating a white incumbent, and served one term.
In 2000, Mants opposed the creation of a landfill along
U.S. Route 80, the highway taken by marchers in the third Selma to Montgomery march, calling it "an insult." As head of Lowndes County Friends of the Trail, he noted "you can't commemorate
he route of the marchon the one hand and desecrate it on the other."
Bob Mants died after a heart attack on December 7, 2011, while visiting Atlanta.
A memorial service was held in Lowndes County on December 17, 2011, where several speakers praised him and his three children (Kadejah, Kumasi, and Katanga) expressed their appreciation for the honors bestowed to him.
In addition to his three children, Mants is survived his wife, Joann Christian (also a noted civil rights activist) and seven grandchildren.
Mants is also survived by three sisters (Dorothy, Roberta, Otelia).
References
External links
SNCC Digital Gateway: Bob Mants Documentary website created by the SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University, telling the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee & grassroots organizing from the inside-out
* . Part of a 10-part series of videorecordings of a conference entitled ''We Shall Not Be Moved: The Life and Times of the SNCC, 1960–1966'' held at
Trinity College Trinity College may refer to:
Australia
* Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales
* Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...
,
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...
, on 14–16 April 1988.
* . "My maternal grandfather ... was born a slave, had witnessed slavery, and he had also witnessed freedom. The notion of his enslavement and him being able to witness the freedom empowered me for the moment. And it still does."
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mants, Bob
American civil rights activists
African-American activists
American anti-racism activists
People from Georgia (U.S. state)
1943 births
2011 deaths
Selma to Montgomery marches
21st-century African-American people