Gloria Richardson

Who is Gloria Richardson?

Gloria St. Clair Hayes Richardson is best known as the leader of the Cambridge Movement, a civil rights struggle in Cambridge, Maryland in the early 1960s. She was recognized as a major figure in the African American civil rights movement at the time and was honored on the stage at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Gloria Richardson was originally born into the affluent St. Clair family, which owned a successful hardware store and had also produced one of Cambridge's only black city council members. Blacks could vote in Cambridge but, with only a third of the population, had never been able to completely overturn Jim Crow laws. According to Richardson, her uncle died in his early twenties when he contracted a major illness but the segregated local hospital would not treat him. Richardson earned a B.A. in sociology from Howard University in 1942. The city government would not hire black social workers, however, and she focused on being a housewife and mother for over a decade.

In 1961, a freedom ride came to Cambridge. The black city council member at the time attempted to discourage the campaign by insisting that the city was already desegregated. In contrast, Gloria Richardson and her college-age daughter Donna both responded to outreach by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At first Gloria rarely participated in civil disobedience, because she could not accept the original SNCC nonviolence regulations. Nonetheless, in 1962, she helped organize the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee, the first adult-led affiliate of SNCC, and became its official spokesperson.