Stamping Out Poverty and Fighting for the Right to Vote:

Observing the Birthday of Civil Rights Legend Rev. Richard Boone

DR. REV. RICHARD BOONE…..HIS LIFE AND LEGACY
LONG LIVE THE LEGACY OF RICHARD C. BOONE (July 7, 1937 – October 10, 2013)
ACTIVIST – ADVOCATE – CIVIL RIGHTS ICON
(Original Field Secretary under Dr. Martin Luther King and SCLC) – COMMUNITY LEADER (Director, Alabama Action Committee) – COUNSELOR – CHAPLAIN (MAJ., US ARMY) –
MINISTER – BELOVED HUSBAND – FATHER – FAMILY – FRIEND –
WITNESS FOR THE OPPRESSED – CHILD OF GOD

What: Rev. Boone Birthday Celebration

When: Friday July 7, 8a.m. to Noon

Where: Cedar Park (Young Fort Village) Housing Authority changed the name to Cedar Park

Reverend Richard Boone was the Field Secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
For half-a-century, beginning on the campus of Alabama State University, the Rev. Richard C. Boone championed human rights, waging a relentless struggle against injustice and racial discrimination. He joined young activists visiting Montgomery to organize for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). These idealists prompted Rev. Boone to seek change through the discipline of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance. Rev. Boone joined SNCC in the early 1960’s. Boone gravitated toward Reverends Jim Bevel, Martin Luther King, Jr, Ralph David Abernathy, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As a field director for SCLC, Boone worked to challenge discrimination throughout Alabama. He worked in Selma with Mrs. Amelia Boynton before, during, and after the Selma to Montgomery March. After Bloody Sunday and Turn Around Tuesday, he was asked to return to Alabama State University to coordinate students’ support for the Selma to Montgomery March. Reverend Boone was successful in organizing hundreds of students to join in the protest.

On March 24, 1965 he organized 800 students from the campus of Alabama State University come to a field was once the site of Young Forte Village and the Cedar Park Housing Project. It was there where Boone and students joined some 25,000 Selma- to-Montgomery marchers on the fourth day of their five day journey. The next day the group arrived in front of Alabama’s capitol to demand their right to vote.

Civil Rights triumph around the state and nation. This included the Voting Rights Act of 1965 emanating from the Voting Rights March of 1965. This prompted the SCLC leadership to assign Reverend Boone to head up civil rights campaigns in places like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The dedicated minister also worked on housing issues and economic development initiatives in Washington, D. C.

When the SCLC decided to shift their focus away from Montgomery in the late 1960’s, Reverend Boone organized the Alabama Action Committee (AAC). Through the ACC, Reverend Boone challenged area stores that would not hire minorities. He organized picketers to target stores that refused to allow Black employees to handle money or assume managerial positions. While this campaign succeeded in toppling vestiges of racial discrimination, the ACC also waged a vigorous campaign against police brutality and judicial injustices.

Reverend Boone became known as the “FOOD STAMP” man. He and the AAC sought and received approval for the food stamp program. Rev. Boone presented the appeal/plan before each agency on several occasions over many months during 1967. The Board of Revenue approved the project on Boone’s first presentation of the plan on August 27, 1967. The County Commission would give the program their approval on October 6, 1967.

Like so many civil rights activists, Reverend Boone sought unsuccessfully to pursue fairness and justice through elective office. However, this created an overwhelming outpour of registered voters/support in the Black Community.
After going back into the service as a Chaplain (MAJOR) for ten years (1979 – 1990) he returned home with his wife, (Activist and Educator) Mary Gambles Boone to continue their work in civil and human rights until he passed, October 10. 2013 at the age of 76.

Former Governor Robert Bentley signed a proclamation designating a portion of West Fairview as Rev. Richard Boone Boulevard that stretches from Fairview and Hill Street to end of the Mobile Road and Southwestern Boulevard encompassing the area where Cedar Park and Young Forte Village area. During the 50th Anniversary of the Selma To Montgomery March in 2015, the marker was unveiled.