George Smith

George Smith was project director for the Congress of Racial Equality in Meridian, Miss.

Also featured on the panel will be William G. Williams, former executive director of the Allen County Local Economic Opportunity Council; George Smith, who was a member of the Congress for Racial Equality in Meridian, Miss.; DeLois McKinley, who took part in civil rights demonstrations in 1963 as a college student; Leonard Goldstein, a leader in the local Jewish community who was active in civil rights issues; and Charles Redd, former city councilman and director of the Fort Wayne Urban League.

George Smith has a long memory.He remembers being pushed to the ground and spit on by the owner of a sandwich shop.He remembers being clubbed by police for sitting in the front row of a public bus.
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Smith, one-time director of the Congress of Racial Equality in Meridian, Miss., is one of many local people mourning the death of a woman many consider the mother of the civil rights movement.
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"Rosa Parks was one of the reasons I joined the (civil rights) movement," Smith says.
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Smith and other civil rights workers continued to test these laws for years.

"In the state of Mississippi, the Civil Rights Act didn't mean anything," Smith says.