Doris Castle
Doris Jean Castle (May 25, 1942 – April 16, 1998) was a
Biography
Doris Castle was born on May 25, 1942, in
Castle graduated from
Many Louisiana women activists for the civil rights movement were not given much recognition for their actions. However, throughout the 1960s and the 1970s Castle went to work as a fundraiser for George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization, after which she worked for various service agencies in New Orleans, including under Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty Initiative, the Urban League, and Odyssey House.[4] In an interview with Shannon Frystak, Castle said, "If I had not been a part of the civil rights movement, I probably would have finished college, married a young man, had three or four kids, a very comfortable home, probably work- and career- orientated in some shape, form, or fashion and took part in most of the things that acceptable Americans take part in: go to church on Sunday, work Monday through Friday, picnic on Saturday... I don't know that I would have been as valuable to myself as I feel that I am because of what I did experience in the civil rights movement" (Frystak 107).[5]
Castle was married and divorced twice, to former city councilman Johnny Jackson Jr. and Allen Scott. She had no children.
In the fall of 1987 her sister, Oretha Castle Haley, died of ovarian cancer. Mourning, Castle excluded herself from political involvement in the community. In 1989 she took her sister's place as the night admissions supervisor at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Ten years later, Doris Castle died on April 16, 1998, from cancer.
CORE
The
After Castle graduated high school her parents gave her a trip to Chicago as a graduation present. There she learned her sister had been arrested back in New Orleans for carrying a picket sign, after which she helped start the first New Orleans chapter of CORE. Castle participated in local and national sit-ins as well as helping raise funds for the national organization.
Many women in the CORE organization, including Castle, were physically and sexually harassed by white men in sit-ins, picket fence lines and jail cells. These women fought harder to achieve racial justice.
The Castle family was very involved in the CORE in New Orleans; their Treme-Laffite house was used as a meeting place to discuss strategies and house other local activists. Their house became known as "the Freedom House".[6]
The New Orleans chapter experienced a rough patch between 1960 and 1961 when many of their members returned to school or worked on other
Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the South protesting segregation. Doris rode the Freedom Riders bus from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi on May 24, 1961, and was arrested the next day because of her involvement. She spent her nineteenth birthday in Parchman Penitentiary.
In an interview with Kim Lacy Rogers, Castle talked about the night before they rode the freedom bus. "I know we were all afraid that night we got on the train at Union Station and left here and went to Montgomery" (Rogers 129).[7][5]
References
- ^ "Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- Letters From the Field ~ Doris Castle". www.crmvet.org. Retrieved 2016-12-07.
- ^ Lacy Rogers, Kim (2002). "The Journal of African American History". The Journal of African American History. 87: 355–393.
- ^ "Obituaries". New Orleans volunteer association. April 2005. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
- ^ a b "Doris Jean Castle | The Historic New Orleans Collection". www.hnoc.org. Retrieved 2020-05-21.
- ^ a b Our Minds on Freedom by Shannon Frystak
- ^ "Fifty Years of Freedom Summer – The New Orleans Tribune". www.theneworleanstribune.com. 29 July 2014. Retrieved 2016-12-07.
- ^ Righteous Lives by Kim Lacy Rogers
7. Turner, Elizabeth Hayes. 2012. "Our Minds on Freedom: Women and the Struggle for Black Equality in Louisiana, 1924-1967." Journal Of Southern History 78, no. 3: 772-773. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed June 27, 2018).