Voices From the Civil Rights Movement: Rodney L. Hurst

To celebrate Black History Month, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is pleased to continue our series of one-on-one conversations with 1960s civil rights activists. This installment features Rodney L. Hurst. As president of the Jacksonville, Florida NAACP Youth Council, Hurst led a series of local sit-in demonstrations, which resulted in an attack by 200 white supremacists on August 27, 1960. Stationed at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth in 1963, he was part of the honor detail when President and Mrs. Kennedy departed for Dallas one hour prior to the assassination. Hurst is the author of several books, including an award-winning account of his civil rights activism, It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke (2008). This interview was recorded via Zoom on November 10, 2021. This interview may contain harsh language and descriptions of violence and may experience occasional technical difficulties.
All interviews featured in the “Voices from the Civil Rights Movement” series are part of the ongoing Oral History Project at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. More than 2,000 interviews have been recorded to date, exploring the history and culture of the 1960s as well as the life, death and legacy of President John F. Kennedy. If you are interested in researching or participating in the Oral History Project, please contact [e-mail]. To see related films, photos, documents and oral histories from The Sixth Floor Museum's collection, visit our online collections database (emuseum.jfk.org).

[@CherylThePearll]

Such an interesting story ppppp so glad you decided to add this to your series of presentations I've been listening to the Smithsonian pp and the library of Congress or interviews on the civil Rights movement all are amazing stories so many people we didn't know or hear about Mr hirst was one of thempp many times we just get the homogenized version so grateful to Mr hirst and what he did with the civil Rights movement thank you