John Reynolds on SCLC staff in 1965 (Provided)
Veteran Seabrook Island civil rights activist and author, Rev. John Reynolds, described as a lifelong champion for social justice and human rights, will lead the 60th anniversary of the SCOPE Project, Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1965 voting rights initiative, now reorganized as SCOPE50. The reunion in Montgomery, AL, on the weekend of March 8-9 will culminate on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to honor the Selma-to-Montgomery March of “Bloody Sunday” in March 1965.
A native of segregated Troy, AL, Reynolds, like other Black teenagers in the South, marched into adulthood immersed in the Civil Rights Movement. He is not afraid to speak truth to power and fight for bold and transformative solutions that will benefit those who have been left out, marginalized, and forgotten.
What was unique to his experience was volunteering in 1965 to help student civil rights workers sent to Alabama by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as part of the SCOPE Project, a campaign to register Black voters. At the end of that summer, he received training at the Penn Center in South Carolina with plans to return to Alabama and continue with community organizing. Instead, Septima Clark, one of the trainers, recommended to Dr. King that Reynolds be hired as an SCLC staff member.
A short time later, he found himself in Atlanta, standing in the sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church, being interviewed by Dr. King himself. John spent the next seven years on the field staff of SCLC, working throughout the South – Selma, Birmingham, Greene County, and Greensboro in Alabama – as well as on the Meredith March in Mississippi.
He worked with Dr. King on the Open Housing Campaign in Chicago, organized the Poor People’s Campaign in New England, and then served as Sanitation Director in Resurrection City, Washington, DC. He worked with SCLC to support the hospital workers’ strike in Charleston and directed a successful SCLC project in Ridgeville, South Carolina, to get Native American children admitted to the public schools.
After leaving SCLC in 1971, Reynolds settled in Providence, Rhode Island, where he served as Assistant Chaplain at Brown University for three years and then worked for several years in social service agencies, including the Martin Luther King Center in Newport. He received a B.A. degree in Political Science from Rhode Island College in 1982 and an M.Div. degree from Andover Newton Theological School in 2000. He served as Interim Pastor and then as Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, from 1997 to 2008.
Reynolds is the author of The Fight for Freedom: A Memoir of My Years in the Civil Rights Movement, published in 2012. He and his wife Gloria now live on Seabrook Island, outside of Charleston, South Carolina.
During his time with SCLC, Reynolds joined a team led by Field Staff Director Rev. Hosea Williams. Shortly after Williams organized and co-led the 1965 Selma March for SCLC, Dr. King asked him to head up SCLC’s 1965 SCOPE Project (Summer Community Organization and Political Education). SCOPE was implemented post-Selma to maximize voter registration upon passage of the Voting Rights Bill.
Williams directed several hundred student volunteers from predominantly white northern colleges who were stationed throughout the South to register voters and help local communities break down barriers to voting. Far from the comfort of their home neighborhoods, the volunteers suffered the same attacks, threats, and persecution as the Black families they came to help. Almost 50,000 new voters were registered that summer.
Now in their 70s and 80s, Reynolds and the original SCOPE Project volunteers are reorganized as SCOPE50 (www.Scope50.org), an ongoing voter registration effort supporting grassroots actions across the South. As president of SCOPE50, Reynolds is hosting a 60th reunion of a few dozen remaining volunteers, including Selma March “footsoldier” Richard Smiley and Hosea Williams’ daughter, Dr. Barbara Williams Emerson. On March 9, the group will travel from their own reunion in Montgomery, AL, to Selma to join the 60-year celebration of the famous march.
In addition to attending the SCOPE50 Reunion and the Selma March anniversary, Reynolds’ group will see “Selma Is Now,” an exhibition of photos by Spider Martin, who became known as “the white photographer who walked backwards from Selma to Montgomery.” Martin’s iconic photos of Williams and John Lewis co-leading the march, peacefully confronting state troopers, and scenes of the violence of Bloody Sunday have been widely seen around the world. His daughter Tracy Martin organized the current installation at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Dr. Emerson of SCOPE50 wrote an exhibition catalogue essay entitled, “That Other Guy on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.”
