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Gloria Richardson Dandridge (born Gloria St. Clair Hayes; May 6, 1922 – July 15, 2021) was an American civil rights activist best known as the leader of the Cambridge movement, a civil rights action in the early 1960s in Cambridge, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. Recognized as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, she was one of the signatories to "The Treaty of Cambridge", signed in July 1963 with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and state and local officials. It was an effort at reconciliation and commitment to change after a riot the month before. At the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Richardson and five other women were honored by being seated on the stage at the Lincoln Memorial, but none of the women were invited to speak to the crowd. The next year Richardson moved to New York City, where she worked locally in Harlem on civil rights and economic development. Early life and education Gloria St. Clair Hayes was born in 1922 to John and Mable (née St. Clair) Hayes in Baltimore, Maryland, the largest city in the state. Her mother was part of the affluent St. Clair family of Cambridge, Maryland, which owned and operated a successful grocery store and funeral home. Her ancestors had been free people of color since before the Civil War, and also owned extensive rental property. During the constraints of the Great Depression, the Hayes family moved to Cambridge, where Mable had grown up. One of Mable's uncles was a lawyer in the state of Maryland. Her family was also involved in politics. Gloria's wealthy maternal St. Clair grandfather was elected to the Cambridge City Council, serving from 1912 to 1946. From a young age, Gloria had a strong personality nurtured by her parents and maternal grandparents. She developed a strong sense of community and started to form her own views on such human rights issues as racism. She attended a neighborhood public school. Her parents encouraged her to speak up and to be comfortable in front of large groups, such as performing at Sunday school programs. The young Hayes pushed against what her parents considered to be respectable behavior for girls from well-to-do families. Her independence and persistence were later displayed also in her civil rights work. While aware of her family privileges, she realized that her college degree, her family's social position, and their navigation of the color line in Cambridge did not provide her or her family with true protection. Her grandparents always taught her to value people for their actions and not for their socioeconomic status. The Hayes family was educated and relatively affluent, but still had suffered racial injustice. Most importantly, Gloria's father John Hayes died of a heart attack due to the lack of nearby medical care accessible to blacks. It forced the young woman to realize that racism was a matter of life and death. Black males had been able to vote in Maryland since emancipation after the American Civil War. (Women were added when the 19th constitutional amendment became effective in 1920.) African Americans in the city of Baltimore were generally segregated into housing in one of five wards, the Second Ward. Within that ward, blacks had built up substantial religious and business communities. They still lived under Maryland state Jim Crow laws and customs in the city at large. Hayes earned a B.A. in sociology in 1942 from Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, DC. She became involved in social activism as a student protesting with others at the Peoples Drug store near campus because the store refused to hire Black workers. In college, she also picketed a segregated Woolworth's store in the capital, where blacks were not allowed to have lunch at the in-store counter. People were surprised by her leadership and her status as a woman from an elite African-American family. They were used to dealing with poor black women who were less outspoken. Through her experiences in Washington, she realized that even 50 years of Black participation in the legal system had limited results. She could see that Cambridge was still highly segregated, and learned that Blacks suffered one of the highest unemployment rates for that size city. Return to Cambridge After Hayes returned to Cambridge after college, she married Harry Richardson and began to explore civil rights. When the city government hired black people as social workers, they were to serve only black clients in the all-black ward. After she was passed over for a social worker position in the "black" ward, she decided to focus on her family and civic work. In an interview with Robert Penn Warren for his book Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965), Richardson said that in Cambridge, blacks were "the last hired and first fired", a phrase applicable to minorities in other places as well. When she divorced from Harry Richardson, she was a mother with two daughters. She worked at a pharmacy and grocery store owned by her family in a predominantly Black community. Richardson has said that her motherhood sparked her activist role. Richardson held a formal office in the Cambridge Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (CNCC). She also served as an adult adviser to the CNCC. At one point she was the only Black woman to head a local civil rights agency. When she became co-chair of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), she began to identify goals beyond desegregation. She sought economic and social justice in housing, education, job opportunity, and health care. While co-chairing CNAC, Richardson gained insight into who to trust in the process of negotiating the expansion of rights of the Black community in Cambridge. During her early activism, Richardson was arrested three times. When she was first arrested, Judge W. Laird described her tactics as "a disgrace to her family's name", attempting to shame her into silence. She continued to fight back harder. She was known for verbal attacks, describing national leaders as presenting "meaningless smiles" due to their failure to gain substantial change. Cambridge movement In December 1961, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) sent Reginald Robinson and William Hansen to Cambridge to organize civil rights actions. SNCC had been contacted by activists in the city. The two young men started sit-ins in February to protest segregated facilities. They targeted movie theaters, bowling alleys, and restaurants. Donna Richardson, Gloria's daughter, was among students who supported the demonstrators. Richardson and Yolanda Sinclair, also mother of a protester, were among parents who wanted to show their support for these actions. In 1961, a Freedom Ride came to Cambridge. The black city council member had attempted to discourage the campaign by insisting that the city was already desegregated. At first Richardson rarely participated in civil disobedience, because she could not accept the original SNCC nonviolence rules. By 19.... Discover the Clair W Hayes popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Clair W Hayes books.