The Monday After: Remembering Massillon native Charles McDew

Charles McDew of Massillon saw segregation and tried to end it.

McDew, the son of a steelworker, realized the need for himself and fellow Black citizens to foster racial change through voting and he tried to encourage African-Americans to go to the ballot boxes.

The 1957 graduate of Washington High School in Massillon who had never spent a significant amount of time outside of Stark County until he decided to continue his schooling in South Carolina, encountered legions of Americans who were casually accepting racial discrimination and he tried to activate them.

In the wake of the celebration of the life of a civil rights giant -- U.S. Rep John Lewis, D-Ga. -- it seems appropriate to remember a local individual who can be respected for standing alongside such notables in the civil rights movement as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, but can also be recognized for his own accomplishments in trying to achieve racial equality for all.

“As a freshman at South Carolina State College, Charles 'Chuck' McDew led nearly 1,000 students on a peaceful march in downtown Orangeburg, S.C.,” wrote Samantha Ickes in the Massillon Independent following McDew's death in April 2018 in West Newton, Mass., at the age of 79.

“There they were met by local police with tear gas and fire hoses. The aggressive response to a peaceful demonstration didn't deter McDew from his life's mission of seeking equal rights. He became a powerful, young leader who was arrested 43 times during his quest for social justice. And his passion for the equality fight stayed with him until his death.”

Students for equality

As Repository writer Charita Goshay reported in an article July 31, McDew, Lewis, and the Rev. James Lawson, another former Massillon resident who spoke last week at Lewis' funeral, were contemporaries and co-founders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and also coordinated the Freedom Riders.

An SNCC biography of McDew, who served as second chairperson of the SNCC from 1961-1963, told how he was experienced in protest long before he went to college.

“McDew led his first demonstration in the eighth grade, to protest violations of the religious freedom of Amish students in his hometown of Massillon,” the profile said.

That the subjects of his protest were not Black was unsurprising in light of an explanation he gave during in a talk for the Moth Radio Hour in 2014. In the story McDew spoke about “the terror of imprisonment and threats to the lives of Civil Rights Movement activists and others during the freedom struggle.”

“It gave me to understand that it is not a struggle of Black people or white people dominating Black people; it is a struggle of people without power being exploited, run over, and destroyed,” he said in the story, entitled “Why The Others Died.”

“The only thing that will make our lives or our deaths meaningful,” he said, “is that we tell the story of why we did what we did and why the others died.”

Teaching others

The website TeachingForChange.org notes that McDew, while he was a student at South Carolina State College was a member of the Orangeburg Movement for Civil Improvement.

“Inevitably involved in the newborn sit-in movement, he was elected as student leader by his fellow demonstrators.”

Jail photos from 1962 document the price McDew paid for his decisions to protest. In a later interview he remembered being arrested three times in two days for not obeying segregation laws in South Carolina.

Later, McDew turned to teaching the lessons he learned from being in the civil rights movement with such icons as Lewis and Lawson and King, the latter of whom once sent a letter to McDew inviting him to represent South Carolina State University at a meeting to discuss student sit-ins.

“McDew was active in organizations for social and political change, working as a teacher and as a labor organizer, managing anti-poverty programs in Washington, D.C., serving as community organizer and catalyst for change in Boston and San Francisco, as well as other communities,” said information at TeachingForChange.org.

“He appeared on countless radio and television programs as a speaker against racism. McDew taught classes at the Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis, Minn., on the history of the civil rights movement, African-American history, and in social and cultural awareness.”

In his words

Along with Lawson and others, McDew is the subject of a display concerning local connections civil rights display that is part of “The Stark County Story” permanent exhibition at Wm. McKinley Presidential Library & Museum in Canton.

McDew made poignant comments during an oral history given in 2011 for the Southern Oral History Project, part of the U.S. Civil Rights Project, a joint effort of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution.

McDew recalled the first time he was arrested, while visiting a roommate's home in Sumter, S.C., for the Thanksgiving holiday during his freshman year in college. While serving as designated driver on the way back to his roommate's house following a party, police pulled him over and asked him for his license.

“The cop said, `Where you from, boy?'” McDew told the interviewer. “ said, `You've got the license, can't you read? I'm from Ohio.”

The police officer asked, “Didn't they ever teach you up there how to talk to a white person?” And McDew said, “You've got to be kidding me.”

“He was a tad peeved and he hit me,” said McDew in the history, saying that his days defending himself in a tough steel town prompted him to hit back.

"The cops beat me bloody. Broke my arm. Busted my jaw," said McDew. “And that's where it all started.... I was arrested for the first time in my life and put in jail.”

Arrests related to the color of his skin didn't end with that incident. And they continued quickly when he was released from jail and allowed to go back to his school.

“When I went to get on the train the conductor said, `Get on back to the baggage car.’ There was one car on the train for black people and when that was filled black people had to got to the baggage car. I said, `No, no, no, no, I don't do baggage cars. There are plenty of seats here.’

“And I was rearrested for violating the laws of segregation and sitting in the car with white people.”