King, Mary (Elizabeth) 1940-

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KING, Mary (Elizabeth) 1940-

PERSONAL: Born July 30, 1940, in New York, NY; daughter of Luther Waddington (a Methodist minister) and Alba Iregui (a teacher of nursing) King; married Peter Geoffrey Bourne (a psychiatrist and author), November 9, 1974. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Ohio Wesleyan University, B.A., 1962; University of Wales—Aberystwyth, Ph.D., 1999. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Protestant.

ADDRESSES: Office—University for Peace, 2119 Leroy Pl. NW, Washington DC 20008-1848. Agent— Gerard F. McCauley, P.O. Box 844, Katonah, NY, 10536. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: National Student Young Women's Christian Assosciation, Atlanta, GA, human relations specialist, 1962; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, assistant director of communications in Atlanta, GA, and Jackson, MS, 1963-65; U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, project officer, 1968-72; Mary King Associates, Inc., Washington, DC, president, 1972-76; ACTION (comprised of Peace Corps, Volunteers in Service to America, Foster Grandparents Program, and other U.S. national volunteer service corps programs), deputy director during Jimmy Carter administration, 1977-81; International Community Leadership Project, Washington, DC, administrator, 1981-83; Young Ideas, Inc., Washington, DC, executive director, 1983-85; U.S.-Iraq Business Forum, consultant on international trade and executive director, 1985-90; Albert Einstein Institution, Boston, MA, fellow, 1996-98; St. George's University, Grenada, professor of international politics, 1999-2001; University for Peace, Washington, DC, professor of peace and conflict studies and special advisor to the rector, 2001—. Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC, member of board of governors, 1990-93; American University, visiting scholar at School of International Service, Center for Global Peace, 1997—. Political and civil rights worker, diplomat, expert on nonviolent struggle, peace and conflict studies, civil rights, civil society, and international affairs; Global Action, Inc., president, 1992—. Democratic National Convention, delegate from District of Columbia, 1976 and 1980; Jimmy Carter presidential campaign, chair of Health Policy Task Force, 1976; Committee of 51.3 Percent, national director, 1976; coordinator of mid-Atlantic presidential primary races, 1976; Member of United States delegations to United Nations world conferences, including delegations to the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, 1977, Club des Amis du Sahel in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 1977, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, France, 1978, World Conference on Desertification in Nairobi, Kenya, 1978, World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in Rome, Italy, 1979, United Nations High Commission on Refugees Pledging Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, 1979, and Mid-Decade World Conference on Women in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1980; special advisor to former president Jimmy Carter on the Middle East, 1984—; International Commission on Peace and Food, member, 1989-94; American Institute for Public Service, board of selectors for Jefferson Awards, 1993—; appointed advisor by the government of India, 1998—. Women's Action Alliance, member of board of directors, 1976—; Save the Children, member of board of directors, 1980-91; Arca Foundation, officer and member of board of directors, 1980—. AMIDEAST Educational and Testing Service, member of board of directors, 1989—.

MEMBER: National Association of Women Business Owners (cofounder; president, 1976-77), Women in International Security, Middle East Studies Association, Women's Foreign Policy Group, Authors Guild, Authors League of America.

AWARDS, HONORS: President's Award, National Association of Women Business Owners, 1975; Recognition of Achievement Award, Women's Equity Action League, 1977; one of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Awards of 1988, for Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement; Distinguished Achievement Award, Ohio Wesleyan University, 1989; elected to National Women's Hall of Fame, 1992.

WRITINGS:

Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, foreword by Andrew Young, preface by Casey Hayden, afterword by Clayborne Carson, William Morrow (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor, with Mary-Jane Deeb) Hasib Sabbagh: From Palestinian Refugee to Citizen of the World, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1996.

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Power of Nonviolent Action, UNESCO (Paris, France), 1999, 2nd edition, Mehta Publishers (New Delhi, India), 2002.

Contributor to books, including Grand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories, edited by Nikki Giovanni, Holt (New York, NY), 1994; and Hands on the Plough, edited by Faith Holsaert, Martha Prescod Norman, and others. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Christian Century, Journal of the American Public Health Association, Liberation, Los Angeles Times, Nation, Newsday, Sage Yearbook Series, Vogue, Washington Star, and Working Woman; contributor to news services, including Knight-Ridder News Service and Scripps-Howard News Service.

SIDELIGHTS: Mary King struggled for years to find a publisher for her book Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. When the book was finally published in 1987, it received both critical acclaim and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. At the award ceremony, as reported by Elizabeth Kastor in the Washington Post, a tearful King told the audience of the heroism of little-known civil rights workers and criticized historians who only saw the more highly-publicized parts of the story. She said, "I really take the prize as an acknowledgment of an untold story."

King first came into contact with the civil rights movement as a senior at Ohio Wesleyan University. The daughter of a Methodist minister with Southern roots (and no relation to Martin Luther King, Jr.), King was working a senior project on race relations in the South and toured national headquarters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (also known as SNCC), located in Atlanta, Georgia. SNCC was the more youthful and more militant alternative to older, mainstream civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Founded largely by idealistic young (mostly black) men in the early 1960s, SNCC ran voter registration drives and conducted sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the South. During the tour, King met prominent civil rights figures Julian Bond, John Lewis, and James Forman. The experience galvanized King's imagination. As she wrote in Freedom Song, SNCC "was different in its dynamism and outlook from the other more staid civil rights groups I had encountered. In these SNCC workers I sensed high energy, self-assurance, impatience, and determination. I identified with them. I saw myself in them." SNCC had loose and consensual leadership practices rather than a rigid and hierarchical ruling structure. As King recalled in an interview with Barbara Gamarekian of the New York Times, "It was the most pure manifestation of democracy that I have ever encountered."

In Freedom Song, King recounts her experiences rooming with a young white Texan woman, Casey Hayden, who became one of her mentors in the intellectual side of the civil rights and feminist movements. King describes her various roles in SNCC during the heady early days. She worked for civil rights activist Ella Baker and in the communications arm of the organization, working for Julian Bond and writing press releases for James Forman and John Lewis. Nicknamed "Meticulous Mary" for her habit of keeping records, she amassed the materials that would later assist her—and, presumably, future historians—in writing about the movement.

The SNCC practice of leadership by consensus led to power struggles in which charismatic leaders, particularly Stokely Carmichael, increasingly imposed their views on the entire group. Tensions arose between white and black volunteers, between men and women, and between black women and white women. At one meeting, King and Hayden circulated, anonymously, a letter asking whether the movement would respond to the concerns of women in the organization. The letter stirred already-existing tensions and much discussion. The most memorable response allegedly came from Carmichael, who said, according to reviewer Juan Williams of the Washington Post Book World, that "the position of women in SNCC was 'prone.'" King, in Freedom Song, treats Carmichael's remark as a humorous quip, but Williams found it more serious and elaborated, "The reader wants more about the difficulties women faced and the sexual tension in SNCC."

A second King-Hayden document, titled "A Kind of Memo from Casey Hayden and Mary King to a Number of Other Women in the Peace and Freedom Movements," was an important stimulus for the late-1960s feminist movement, according to Susan Brownmiller in the New York Times Book Review. As King told Barbara Gamarekian in the New York Times, "It has been pretty well established that that manifesto served as a catalyst for a lot of the consciousnessraising groups that began meeting around the country."

Tensions within SNCC increased after a massive influx of white volunteers for the ambitious 1964 Summer Project, which King viewed ambivalently. The Summer Project led to 1,000 arrests, thirty beatings, thirty-five church bombings, thirty home bombings, and the killings of SNCC workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. It also led to the founding of the Freedom Democratic Party, and was a major focal point of publicity for the civil rights movement. It did not, however, strengthen SNCC internally. All whites, including King, were expelled from SNCC in 1965, but King's book expresses no bitterness. King remains lifelong friends with many of her former colleagues in the organization.

Critics considered Freedom Song to be a significant historical document about the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. Susan Brownmiller observed in the New York Times Book Review that "Freedom Song will stand as a monument to that wondrous time." Juan Williams, although commenting that King pulls punches on matters of intragroup conflict, said in the Washington Post Book World that "Freedom Song is most absorbing when it shows the details of post-adolescents running a civil rights group and the contradictions in their methods and actions." He stated that "the book works best when King writes about the romance of the movement and particularly her attraction to SNCC"; he also praised the "wonderful irony in her writing about the prejudice both black and white women faced in the male-dominated SNCC."

Harold Cruse, contributing to the Los Angeles Times Book Review, praised Freedom Song for its "quality of an extended diary," appearing as if it was "written in wistful retrospection" even though it does not adequately explain what caused the downfall of SNCC. According to a New Yorker reviewer, King's book does effectively memorialize what SNCC accomplished during its years of influence and does present a snapshot of American culture in the 1960s. The reviewer added that the book "commemorates the courage of young people who risked—or lost—their lives in the cause of conscience."

After leaving SNCC, King continued an active career in public service. In 1968 she became a project officer for the United States Office of Economic Opportunity, serving in that capacity for four years. In 1972, she joined a small group of people organizing Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign. During her affiliation with Carter, King attended the 1976 and 1980 Democratic National conventions as a delegate, coordinated a regional primary campaign, and convinced Carter of the importance of giving greater prominence to women in his organization. Simultaneously, she was president of a management consulting firm based in Washington, DC.

During the four-year Carter administration, King traveled extensively as a member of American delegations to international conferences on such subjects as food policy, agrarian reform, and the fight against hunger and poverty. A founder of the National Association of Women Business Owners, she became its president in 1976. She has also been an important figure in the work of the Save the Children Foundation and other public service groups.

King has worked with international as well as national interests. She has worked in international trade, with an emphasis on the Middle East, Central America, Africa, and Asia; she has spurred private initiatives on development, refugee issues, and improving international relations. From 1983 to 1985, she was the director of former Atlanta mayor and United States representative Andrew Young's nonprofit development organization called Young Ideas, Inc. From 1985 to 1990 she was the executive director of the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum, aimed at improving commercial relations between the two nations. Later, in the 1990s, King served as president of her own company, Global Action, Inc. Subsequently, she went on to become a global authority on nonviolent political movements and a professor of peace and conflict studies.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

King, Mary, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, foreword by Andrew Young, preface by Casey Hayden, and afterword by Clayborne Carson, William Morrow (New York, NY), 1987.