Book: The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation, by Joseph R. Fitzgerald
Jim Block • March 30, 2021
A deliberate, resourceful woman, Gloria Richardson may often have been out of the spotlight, but nevertheless exerted considerable influence as an Eastern Shore civil rights leader in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation, by Joseph R. Fitzgerald (Kentucky, 2018), takes an important step in telling her story, a story that assuredly belongs on the shelf with Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet, and Harriet Tubman. Born in Baltimore in 1922, Richardson will turn 99 in May.
In January 1962, Deborah Richardson, Richardson’s older daughter, joined with schoolmates and some college-age members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to protest school segregation and racial injustice in Cambridge, Dorchester County, Md. At the same time, some Black Cambridge citizens organized the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC). Much like SNCC, CNAC’s purpose was to engage local people directly and immediately to act on their needs as they saw them, rather than slog through the legal system in slow-moving lawsuits overseen by judges mired in the status quo. Protests were organized not by outsiders, but by local school and college students.
Their efforts ceased when local leaders, Black and White, promised to desegregate local public accommodations. When this promise was unfulfilled, CNAC, led by Richardson, took over leadership of the Cambridge efforts. Like SNCC’s operations, CNAC’s were run locally, free of imposition from the established civil rights groups and churches. The egalitarian group, as Fitzgerald writes, “made a conscious effort not to privilege one person’s sexuality, political, or economic philosophy, or religion over another’s.” (Fitzgerald, 80)
To begin their efforts, Richardson (a Howard University sociology major) and CNAC conducted a needs assessment survey to ascertain what the community thought needed most attention. Despite the committee’s expectations, the survey found desegregating public accommodations unimportant. Instead, Black Cambridge residents cited jobs, housing, and schools as their greatest needs.
While Richardson and CNAC pushed for voter education and voting rights, the gerrymandered voting districts maintained the Whites’ power. CNAC also pressed for desegregated workplaces and for a badly-needed public housing project.
In May, the conflict’s momentum increased because police arrested teenage demonstrators roughly at the Dorset Theater and, in response, a crowd of protestors marched on the local jail. Two more teenagers were arrested, and soon the town boiled in civil conflict. Richardson telegraphed U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for demonstrator protection, and two ministers asked for, but failed to get, immediate help from Maryland Gov. J. Millard Tawes. Eventually, a City Council request brought in the National Guard and martial law to make peace.
In Annapolis, Richardson and some Black and White leaders met with Tawes; little came from this meeting except Richardson’s demonstrating CNAC’s influence and letting state and federal officials witness the White Cambridge City Council’s failures.
In June, the Kennedy administration held mediation meetings with CNAC and other Cambridge civil rights leaders. In July, the City Council debated a charter amendment to require that public accommodations to be open to all. Richardson found their amendment proposal worthless because the White majority could easily use a referendum to undo the charter change. She also argued that Whites should not have the power to determine Blacks’ rights. The charter amendment passed, Governor Tawes lifted martial law, and withdrew the Guard, and, according to Richardson’s plan, CNAC resumed demonstrations the next day at a local restaurant. The subsequent all-night conflict included, according to a state police official, gunfire “almost on the scale of warfare” (Fitzgerald, 109). So, the National Guard returned four days later.
The Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights wanted to meet with Richardson, but she refused. She also refused to speak with President John F. Kennedy, telling the Justice Department lawyer to tell “those Kennedy brothers they can both go to hell.” (Fitzgerald, 110)
Attorney General Kennedy held a meeting in July; the attendees included Richardson, SNCC Chairman John Lewis, Maryland Attorney General Robert C. Murphy, and the National Guard commander, Gen. George M. Gelston. Cambridge city officials were not invited. Out of this meeting came the “Treaty of Cambridge,” containing measures CNAC had earlier proposed from the previous community needs survey. In return, CNAC pledged to stop demonstrations. Richardson agreed to ending them because she expected the city government would not keep the agreement and thereby invalidate it. Her role was widely and highly praised. In spite of that recognition, her role at the August 1963 March on Washington was limited, perhaps because March organizers feared controversy from her, including her belief that direct action should be carried out that day.
That summer, as Richardson expected, the White establishment organized a referendum petition to undo the earlier desegregation charter change. Richardson urged Black voters to boycott the referendum because the charter change granted rights already guaranteed by the Constitution. Voting on the charter change gave White voters unjust power over Blacks’ rights, according to Richardson. Fortunately, the referendum vote defeated the amendment.
In the summer of 1964, Richardson’s Eastern Shore civil rights work ended. She left CNAC and (having divorced Harry Richardson in 1960) moved to New York and married photographer Frank Dandridge. According to Fitzgerald, Richardson had intended to lead CNAC only so long as it needed her.
As this review has suggested, Gloria Richardson’s civil rights work was distinctive. The Cambridge movement was not connected with the older, larger civil rights organizations, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Richardson wanted an operation free of the traditional gradualist and male-dominated approach.
In the egalitarian Cambridge movement, she, as a woman, became a key figure. She moved to New York, but her influence in Cambridge remains. She was honored at a Cambridge banquet in August 2010. As a child, Victoria Jackson-Stanley, Cambridge’s first Black mayor (2008-2020), revered Richardson and has said, “Harriet Tubman and Gloria Richardson have been my idols since I can remember. They set the path for me.”
Joseph R. Fitzgerald, The Struggle is Eternal: Gloria Richardson and Black Liberation (Kentucky, 2018)
John Lewis, “Her Legacy Shines on in Cambridge,” Baltimore Sun.
Jim Block taught English at Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in Western Mass. He coached cross-country, and advised the newspaper and the debate society there. He taught at Marlborough College in England and Robert College in Istanbul. He and his wife, Penny, retired to Chestertown, Md. in 2014.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
Right now, Congress is working on a fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs in order to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.
The House Agriculture Committee recently voted, along party lines, to advance legislation that would cut as much as $300 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP is the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, helping more than 41 million people in the U.S. pay for food. With potential cuts this large, it helps to know who benefits from this program in Maryland, and who would lose this assistance. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compiled data on SNAP beneficiaries by congressional district, cited below, and produced the Maryland state datasheet , shown below. In Maryland, in 2023-24, 1 in 9 people lived in a household with SNAP benefits. In Maryland’s First Congressional District, in 2023-24: Almost 34,000 households used SNAP benefits. Of those households, 43% had at least one senior (over age 60). 29% of SNAP recipients were people of color. 15% were Black, non-Hispanic, higher than 11.8% nationally. 6% were Hispanic (19.4% nationally). There were 24,700 total veterans (ages 18-64). Of those, 2,200 lived in households that used SNAP benefits (9%). The CBPP SNAP datasheet for Maryland is below. See data from all the states and download factsheets here.
Apparently, some people think that the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” is a foregone conclusion, and that the struggle over the budget and Trump’s agenda is over and done. Not true. On Sunday night, the bill — given the alternate name “Big Bad Bullsh*t Bill” by the Democratic Women’s Caucus — was voted out of the House Budget Committee. The GOP plan is to pass this legislation in the House before Memorial Day. But that’s not the end of it. As Jessica Craven explained in her Chop Wood Carry Water column: “Remember, we have at least six weeks left in this process. The bill has to: Pass the House, Then head to the Senate where it will likely be rewritten almost completely, Then be passed there, Then be brought back to the House for reconciliation, And then, if the House changes that version at all, Go back to the Senate for another vote.” She adds, “Every step of that process is a place for us to kill it.” The bill is over a thousand pages long, and the American people will not get a chance to read it until it has passed the House. But, thanks to 5Calls , we know it includes:
Let's talk about our Eastern Shore Delegation, the representatives who are supposed to fight for our nine Shore counties in Annapolis, and what they actually got up to this session.
For the first time in recent memory, Virginia Democrats have candidates running in all 100 House of Delegates districts — a milestone party leaders and grassroots organizers say reflects rising momentum as President Donald Trump’s second term continues to galvanize opposition.
The 447th legislative session of the Maryland General Assembly adjourned on April 8. This End of Session Report highlights the work Shore Progress has done to fight for working families and bring real results home to the Shore. Over the 90-day session, lawmakers debated 1,901 bills and passed 878 into law. Shore Progress and members supported legislation that delivers for the Eastern Shore, protecting our environment, expanding access to housing and healthcare, strengthening workers’ rights, and more. Shore Progress Supported Legislation By The Numbers: Over 60 pieces of our backed legislation were passed. Another 15 passed in one Chamber but not the other. Legislation details are below, past the budget section. The 2026 Maryland State Budget How We Got Here: Maryland’s budget problems didn’t start overnight. They began under Governor Larry Hogan. Governor Hogan expanded the state budget yearly but blocked the legislature from moving money around or making common-sense changes. Instead of fixing the structural issues, Hogan used federal covid relief funds to hide the cracks and drained our state’s savings from $5.5 billion to $2.3 billion to boost his image before leaving office. How Trump/Musk Made It Worse: Maryland is facing a new fiscal crisis driven by the Trump–Musk administration, whose trade wars, tariff policies, and deep federal cuts have hit us harder than most, costing the state over 30,000 jobs, shuttering offices, and erasing promised investments. A University of Maryland study estimates Trump’s tariffs alone could cost us $2 billion, and those federal cuts have already added $300 million to our budget deficit. Covid aid gave us a short-term boost and even created a fake surplus under Hogan, but that money is gone, while housing, healthcare, and college prices keep rising. The Trump–Musk White House is only making things worse by slashing funding, gutting services, and eliminating research that Marylanders rely on. How The State Budget Fixes These Issues: This year, Maryland faced a $3 billion budget gap, and the General Assembly fixed it with a smart mix of cuts and fair new revenue, while protecting working families, schools, and health care. The 2025 Budget cuts $1.9 billion ($400 million less than last year) without gutting services people rely on. The General Assembly raised $1.2 billion in fair new revenue, mostly from the wealthiest Marylanders. The Budget ended with a $350 million surplus, plus $2.4 billion saved in the Rainy Day Fund (more than 9% of general fund revenue), which came in $7 million above what the Spending Affordability Committee called for. The budget protects funding for our schools, health care, transit, and public workers. The budget delivers real wins: $800 million more annually for transit and infrastructure, plus $500 million for long-term transportation needs. It invests $9.7 billion in public schools and boosts local education aid by $572.5 million, a 7% increase. If current revenue trends hold, no new taxes will be needed next session. Even better, 94% of Marylanders will see a tax cut or no change, while only the wealthiest 5% will finally pay their fair share. The tax system is smarter now. We’re: Taxing IT and data services like Texas and D.C. do; Raising taxes on cannabis and sports betting, not groceries or medicine; and Letting counties adjust income taxes. The budget also restores critical funding: $122 million for teacher planning $15 million for cancer research $11 million for crime victims $7 million for local business zones, and Continued support for public TV, the arts, and BCCC The budget invests in People with disabilities, with $181 million in services Growing private-sector jobs with $139 million in funding, including $27.5 million for quantum tech, $16 million for the Sunny Day Fund, and $10 million for infrastructure loans. Health care is protected for 1.5 million Marylanders, with $15.6 billion for Medicaid and higher provider pay. Public safety is getting a boost too, with $60 million for victim services, $5.5 million for juvenile services, and $5 million for parole and probation staffing. This budget also tackles climate change with $100 million for clean energy and solar projects, and $200 million in potential ratepayer relief. Public workers get a well-deserved raise, with $200 million in salary increases, including a 1% COLA and ~2.5% raises for union workers. The ultra-wealthy will finally chip in to pay for it: People earning over $750,000 will pay more, Millionaires will pay 6.5%, and Capital gains over $350,000 get a 2% surcharge. Deductions are capped for high earners, but working families can still deduct student loans, medical debt, and donations. This budget is bold, fair, and built to last. That’s why Shore Progress proudly supports it. Click on the arrows below for details in each section.
