To Ruby Doris Smith

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Walker, Wyatt Tee

Date: September 6, 1961

Location: Atlanta, Ga.?

Genre: Letter

Topic: Freedom Rides

Details

King and Walker notify Smith that she is the recipient of a $200 scholarship from SCLC for her participation in the Freedom Rides.¹

Miss Ruby Doris Smith
702 Wall Street
McComb, Mississippi

Dear Miss Smith:

This is to certify that you have been awarded a $200.00 scholarship for the school year 1961–62 as a part of SCLC’s Scholarship aid to Freedom Riders Program.

Please indicate by return mail at which College or University you intend to register. As soon as we receive information you will be forwarded a certified check for the amount indicated above.

Dependent upon more finances being made available it is possible that additional scholarship aid may be available in the future.

Sincerely,
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
President

Wyatt Tee Walker,
Director

MLK: WTW/vmb

^1. Nearly twenty students, including John Lewis, Jim Zwerg, and Paul Brooks, received scholarships. Eligible recipients were movement activists who demonstrated a financial need and were in good academic standing at the college or university at which they were enrolled (SCLC, “Briefs,” September 1961; “Ten ‘Riders’ Given Grants by M. L. King,” Montgomery Advertiser, 29 September 1961; Walker, “Report of the director,” 28 September 1961). In September 1961, the American Baptist Convention (ABC), a pre­dominately white and Northern religious organization, announced a partnership with SCLC to provide scholarships to college students active in the movement. With the help of the Field Foundation, ABC provided SCLC with $16,000 in scholarship aid, which would be administered by both organizations (“Baptist Unit to Aid Rights Campaigners,” New York Times, 24 September 1961; Walker, “Report of the director,” 28 September 1961). Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (1942–1967), born in Atlanta, Georgia, was a sophomore at Spelman College when she joined the nascent Atlanta student movement in early 1960. She attended SNCC’s founding meeting at Shaw University, and was one of four SNCC demonstrators who spent a month in prison in early 1961 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. A member of SNCC’s executive committee, she succeeded James Forman as SNCC’s executive secretary in 1966. Smith graduated from Spelman in 1965 and died in 1967 after a ten-month battle with cancer.

Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.