Joanne Grant, 74; Documented Grassroots Efforts on Civil Rights

by Benjamin T. Greenberg on January 17, 2005

January 15, 2005
Joanne Grant, 74; Documented Grassroots Efforts on Civil Rights
New York Times
By JENNIFER BAYOT

Joanne Grant, an activist who documented the grassroots efforts behind the civil rights movement through her journalism, filmmaking and commentary, died on Sunday at St. Vincent's Midtown Hospital. She was 74 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was heart failure, her son, Mark Rabinowitz, said.

Ms. Grant wrote "Black Protest" (Fawcett, 1968), a documentary analysis of black resistance from 1619 on. One of the first books to trace the origins of the civil rights movement, it remains required reading in many classes on African-American history.

A former assistant to W. E. B. DuBois, Ms. Grant sought to profile the struggle for civil rights through its community leaders. Her award-winning documentary film "Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker" (1981), about an unsung matriarch of the civil rights movement, was broadcast nationally on PBS. She later wrote "Ella Baker: Freedom Bound" (Wiley, 1998), a biography. In "Confrontation on Campus" (New American Library, 1969), she described sit-ins at Columbia University and elsewhere.

"She was an important voice in the early writing on the civil rights movement," said Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, a professor of African-American studies at Harvard. "Scholars began to realize that you couldn't understand how this became a national phenomenon unless you understood how communities rallied around issues."

Friends described Ms. Grant as the movement's publicist and said she saw herself as both journalist and advocate. She was a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in the 1960's and in later years organized benefits for social causes and political candidates.

In the 1960's, as a reporter for The National Guardian, she often traveled to rural Southern towns to describe demonstrations and organizations that other publications largely ignored.

"She exposed and explained the civil rights movement in ways that the daily press either couldn't or wouldn't," said Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Joanne Grant Rabinowitz, whose father was white and mother biracial, was born in Utica, N.Y., on March 30, 1930. She graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in history and journalism.

In addition to her son, Mark, of Manhattan, she is survived by her husband, Victor Rabinowitz, a lawyer and activist; a daughter, Abby, of Hamburg, N.J.; a stepson, Peter, of Clinton, N.Y.; a stepdaughter, Joni, of Pittsburgh; a half-sister, Mary Jane Hubbard of Norwich, N.Y.; a half-brother, James Hubbard of Orlando, Fla.; and two step-grandchildren.