Schools to Prison Pipeline, Today's Civil Rights Issue
Brief Biography
Constance Curry is a writer, activist, and a fellow at the Institute for Women's Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. She has a Juris Doctor degree from Woodrow Wilson College. Curry did graduate work in political science at Columbia University and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bordeaux in France. She earned her B.A. degree in History, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She was a Fellow at the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute, Center for Civil Rights, Charlottesville.1990-91.
Curry is the author of several works, including her award winning book, Silver Rights (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1995; Paper back Harcourt Brace, 1996), which won the Lillian Smith Book Award for nonfiction in 1996; was a finalist for the 1996 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award; was recommended by the New York Times for summer reading in 1996; and was named the Outstanding Book on the subject of Human Rights in North America by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights.
With an introduction by Marian Wright Edelman, Silver Rights tells the true story of Mrs. Mae Bertha Carter and her family's struggle for education in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The Carters were Mississippi Delta sharecroppers living on a cotton plantation in the 1960s when they dared to send seven of their thirteen children to desegregate an all-white school system in 1965 after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Curry's book provides much insight into the family's determination to obtain an education for their children.
Her most recent book is Mississippi Harmony with Ms. Winson Hudson, published fall 2002 by Palgrave/St, Martin's press. Mississippi Harmony tells the life story of Mrs. Winson a civil rights leader from Leake County, Miss.,who also challenged segregation in the 1960s. Curry also collaborated in and edited Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement (University of Georgia Press, 2000) and the book Aaron Henry: the Fire Ever Burning (University Press of Mississippi, 2000).
From 1957 to l959, she was National Field Representative, Collegiate Council for United Nations, New York City. From l960 to l964, she was the Director of the Southern Student Human Relations Project of U. S. National Student Association, Atlanta, Georgia, developing programs for black and white college students to communicate and organize and served as advisor on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during its campus-based years. From 1964 to 1975, Curry was Southern Field Representative for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). From 1975 to 1990, she was Director of the Office of Human Services, Mayor's appointment in City of Atlanta Government.
Curry is the producer of a newly released documentary film entitled "The Intolerable Burden," (winner of the John O'Connor film award, Jan. 2004, from the American Historical Association) based on her book Silver Rights, but showing today's resegregation in public schools and the fast track to prison for youth of color.As activist/participant and a writer/intellectual holding a law degree..
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