Mae Mallory

Mae Mallory (June 9, 1927 – 2007) was an activist of the Civil Rights Movement and a Black Power movement leader active in the 1950s and 1960s. She is best known as an advocate of school desegregation and of black armed self-defense.

Early life Mallory was born in Macon, Georgia, on June 9, 1927. Mae Mallory spent the majority of her early life in her birthplace, Macon. Although Mallory grew up amidst cruel racist intolerance, she accredits her female family members with teaching her that she is just as important as her white peers and how to stand up for herself. The city's zoning policies created a system where schools were racially segregated by mirroring the neighborhoods' lack of diversity. Although racial segregation within the school system was prohibited by law, schools were still affected by racial separation, meaning that Black and Latino children were receiving a second-class education. While the children were engaged in another boycott in 1960, the campaign established some of the first Freedom Schools of the civil rights movement to educate them.

Trouble in Monroe In 1958, Mae Mallory traveled to Monroe, North Carolina after the beating and attempted rape of two Black women at the hands of white men and failure for the two women to receive justice. Following the incident, Monroe native and activist, Robert Williams, called Mallory in NYC and told her that the Freedom Riders were now in Monroe. However, on October 11, 1961, twenty-five FBI agents found Mallory and sent her to Monroe to be tried for her kidnapping. On March 1, 1962, During her time in jail, Mallory wrote Memo from a Monroe Jail, describing her experience being wrongly convicted of kidnapping and commented on the state of the nation. .

COINTELPRO tried to break up the support group Committee to Support the Monroe Defendants.

Activism outside of Monroe She supported Robert F. Williams, the Monroe, North Carolina NAACP chapter leader, and author of Negroes with Guns, During the Freedom Rides in August 1961, she worked with Williams in protecting Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists who were demonstrating in Monroe. This led to armed confrontations with white supremacists and allegations of kidnapping a white couple.

She mentored Yuri Kochiyama.

She was a friend of Madalyn Murray O'Hair. On February 21, 1965, Mallory was present at the assassination of Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom. In April 1965, she was instrumental in a Times Square protest against the 1965 United States occupation of the Dominican Republic. On August 8, 1966, she spoke at an anti-Vietnam War rally. In 1974, she lived in Mwanza, Tanzania.

Her papers are held at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.