Howard Simon

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Howard Simon is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

Civil rights

In 1965, the City College Student Government received a telegram from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — one of many he sent to allies around the country — urging that if they shared his vision and commitment to equality and racial justice, they should join him for a “peaceful, nonviolent march for freedom’’ from Selma to Montgomery

Howard Simon was serving as vice president and his friend John Zippert was student government president.

Understandably, our parents were terrified about our decision to join Dr. King in Selma. The month before, an Alabama state trooper shot and killed civil rights demonstrator Jimmie Lee Jackson, and a few weeks later thugs killed James Reeb, a Boston Unitarian minister.

Two years earlier, three young men, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman (then a student at Queens College) were brutally murdered in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer campaign to assist blacks in registering to vote. John Zippert’s mother knew the agony of Andrew Goodman’s mother; both were members of the same Hadassah group

John Zippert, another friend from Hunter College, and Howard Simon boarded the bus for Selma.

With student-government expertise, Simon was assigned to work the mimeograph machine in the basement of Brown Chapel under the direction of Dr. King’s aide, Rev. Andrew Young. They attended evening rallies at the Church, and were inspired by the words of Dr. King that Alabama and the nation had a “date with destiny.”

The 54-mile march began on Sunday, March 21. Under the terms of the injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson, a chosen group of about 300 marchers (priests, nuns, rabbis and students — black and white together — led by Dr. King) crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River and headed to Montgomery. Zippert, Simon, and others, were later bused to catch up with the demonstrators.

We spent nights sleeping on school gymnasium floors. Along Route 80, we supported each other by singing the anthems of the Civil Rights Movement. But the tone changed once we reached Montgomery. As we marched through the streets toward the Alabama state capitol, I recall the tense silence. Crowds lined both sides of the streets, often cursing, sometimes spitting at the marchers.

Later that day, a car with four Klansmen overtook the vehicle driven by Viola Liuzzo, who was ferrying a civil rights marcher back to Selma. Shots were fired, and the Detroit mother of five young children was hit twice in the face and killed.

John and I returned home from Selma to go our separate paths, but continuing to work for racial equality and social justice. Almost immediately, John returned to the South — where he still works. [1]

Later life

Howard Simon returned from Selma to graduate from The City College. He later received a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, and, for several years, taught at DePauw University in Indiana.

He was later appointed Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, serving from 1974 to 1997.

Since 1997, I have been serving as the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Florida affiliate. Since the botched election in 2000, protecting the right to vote has been a major focus of my work. It has been 50 years since Dr. King led the march from Selma to Montgomery. Those in power no longer use charging horses, clubs, tear gas and mobs to deny people the right to vote. Manipulation of voting procedures, onerous Voter ID requirements, computer purges and voting bans against former felons are today’s weapons.
John and I — each in our own way — have worked for racial equality, justice and the right to vote since the days we spent in Selma and walked Highway 80 to Montgomery 50 years ago.
But it was the instilling of a social justice conscience during our years at The City College that propelled us to Selma in 1965 and changed the course of our lives.

[2]

National Conference on Government Spying

Howard Simon was cited by Rep. Larry McDonald of Georgia in the congressional record on January 31, 1977 as being on the steering committee of the National Conference on Government Spying NCGS, which was held at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, on January 20-23, 1977. The NCGS was organized by the National Lawyers Guild, which, as Rep. Larry McDonald explained:[3]

"has explicitly stated its support for revolutionary 'armed struggle' and terrorism as in the armed occupation of Wounded Knee and in violent prison riots. The NLG International Committee maintains open liaison with terrorist Marxist "liberation movements" such as the Palestine Liberation Organization. The NLG is a member of the Soviet-controlled International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL): the NLG was formed with the assistance of the Comintern in 1936 and was cited as the "foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party, its fronts and controlled unions." The NLG now operates as a working coalition of Communist Party, U.S.A. (CPUSA members and supporters, Castroite Communists, Maoist Communists, and various New Left activists."

Steering Committee

The NCGS steering committee consisted of:

The National Conference on Government Spying was organized from room 815, 33 North Dearborn, Chicago, Ill. 60602, 312/939-2492, with Paul Bigman as information coordinator. In addition to the NLG, those assisting with conference expenses were the ACLU and the Playboy Foundation which commissioned the conference handbook, a more than 225-page manual-$15-entitled "Pleading, Discovery and Pretrial Procedure for Litigation Against Government Spying," whose principal authors are Robert C. Howard and Kathleen M. Crowley, general counsel and staff counsel, respectively. of the Better Government Association, a plaintiff in the suit against the Chicago police intelligence unit, ACLU v. Chicago, Civ. Action 75 C 6295 <N.D. Ill., Eastern Div.) which has been consolidated with Alliance To End Repression v. Rochford, 74 C 3268.
The manual gives special acknowledgement to Robert J. Vollen, Richard M. Gutman, Constance Glass, David M. Hamlin, Lois Lipton Kraft, Margaret Winter, and Morton Halperin, and states:
We particularly want to acknowledge the continuous assistance and information exchange with the Political Rights Defense Fund (Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General) and the Project on National Security and Civil Liberties (which is pursuing several lawsuits).

References

  1. ↑ Miami Herald, Civil Rights Movement and the Class of 1965 BY HOWARD SIMON JUNE 20, 2015
  2. ↑ Miami Herald, Civil Rights Movement and the Class of 1965 BY HOWARD SIMON JUNE 20, 2015
  3. ↑ [1] (accessed on August 31, 2023)
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