Charles McDew

Charles "Chuck" McDew (June 23, 1938 – April 3, 2018) was an American civil rights activist. After attending South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, he became the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1960 to 1963. His involvement in the movement earned McDew the title, "black by birth, a Jew by choice and a revolutionary by necessity" stated by fellow SNCC activist Bob Moses.

Life Charles Frederick McDew was born in Massillon, Ohio, on June 23, 1938, to Eva (née Stephens) and James McDew. He was one of five children. Mcdew's mother worked as a nurse and his father, who had been a chemistry teacher in South Carolina, had become a steel worker after Ohio schools refused to hire him. According to McDew's autobiography, he believed that his birth date was notable because he was born on the day that boxer Joe Louis defeated Max Schmeling for the heavyweight championship of the world. McDew was convinced by his elders that he was destined to do something great or good for the "Negro" race. McDew also referred to himself as a "race baby", an ideal that had never been defined to him by family members, but one that he believed he was expected to define for himself as his future unfolded. "I had a charge to do something for the race. It was never specified what I would do for the race, but it was expected that I would do something to help the colored race to move ahead".

McDew grew up in a family who talked little about the advancement of civil rights. Protesting the rights of religious freedom, McDew stood up by protesting against discrimination toward the Amish at the age of 13.

The Movement In March 1960, not long after the first Greensboro sit-ins organized by students in North Carolina, McDew helped to lead a major protest against segregation in Orangeburg. Together with his co-leader Thomas Gaither, a student at Claflin College, McDew was one of some 1,000 students from South Carolina State University and Claflin who marched downtown to protest segregated stores. The marchers were brutally attacked by firemen and police officers, who turned firehoses on the students and arrested close to 400, confining many of them outdoors in a stockade used to hold cattle. McDew was among the marchers who was arrested.

The next month, McDew received a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. inviting him to a meeting at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina to discuss the student sit ins, and as a representative for South Carolina State University, This meeting talked about student involvement all over the South, along with King trying to persuade everyone to join the SCLC. Feeling that the real value to the movement would ultimately be the black voters, McDew and the organization went on to promote registration in the "blackest" parts of the country. This was a way of protesting the illegal arrests they were suffering

McDew was elected because of his obvious drive for the movement.

He was also active in organizations for social and political change, working as a teacher and as a labor organizer, managing anti-poverty programs in Washington, D.C., "serving as community organizer and catalyst for change in Boston and San Francisco, as well as other communities".

McDew died on April 3, 2018, aged 79, of a heart attack, while visiting his longtime partner in West Newton, Massachusetts. At the time of his death, he lived in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was retired from Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis, where he had taught classes in the history of the civil rights movement, African American history and classes in social and cultural awareness.