Constance Curry

Constance Winifred Curry (July 19, 1933 – June 20, 2020) was an American civil rights activist, educator, and writer. A longtime opponent of racial discrimination, she was the first white woman to serve on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Early life Born to Hazle and Ernest Curry in Paterson, New Jersey, she grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina and graduated from Greensboro High School, now known as Grimsley High School. She became an ally of Mae Bertha Carter and Mathew Carter during their successful 1965 fight to desegregate North Sunflower Academy in Mississippi. Curry's 1995 book Silver Rights chronicles the events surrounding the Carters, and won the 1996 Lillian Smith Book Award for nonfiction. She served as a field representative in the American Friends Service Committee from 1964 to 1975.

Later life In 1975 Curry became the City of Atlanta's Director of Human Services where she served under Maynard Jackson and then Andrew Young until 1990. In 2003 she produced a film adaptation of Silver Rights, titled The Intolerable Burden. Her papers reside at Emory University in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. She attended law school "just because I wanted to" and received her JD from the now-defunct Woodrow Wilson College of Law in 1984. She died of sepsis in Atlanta, Georgia, on 6 June 2020.

Selected works