John Dorsey Due, Jr. and Patricia Stephens Due have been stalwart crusaders civil rights and equality for four decades. They married on January 5, 1963; that same year, they made one of their most memorable journeys on a Freedom Train from Miami to the nation’s capital to attend the March on Washington on August 28. They have three daughters; Tananarive a Miami Herald columnist and novelist; Johnita, a New York attorney; and Lydia, a Dallas attorney.

Patricia Stephens Due, Who was born on December 9, 1939, in Quincy, Florida, migrated to Dade County and began her education at Anderson‘s Kindergarten in Overtown. Her civil rights involvement began in Dade County in 1959, when she attended a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) workshop. She and her sister, Priscilla Stephens Kruize, later organized a CORE chapter in Tallahassee, where they attending Florida A & M University (FAMU). In 1960, they were among five FAMU students who spent 49 days in Tallahassee jail rather than pay a fine for sitting-in at a Woolworth lunch counter. Their action became the Jail-in in the nation during the student Sit-in Movement.

Patricia Due was arrested time and time again – in Miami, Tallahassee, St. Petersburg, Ocala and New York City – for her involvement in civil rights demonstrations. During one of her several suspensions from FAMU because of her activities, Due became a CORE field secretary overseeing voter registration and voter education drives in 19 North Florida counties. In addition to CORE, Due worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF). Due and other activists were subjected to tear gassing and gunshots fired into their home and headquarters. To this day, Due almost always wears dark glasses because her eyes have remained sensitive to light after being tear gassed in 1960. She and Tananarive are currently writing a book about the civil rights movement.

John Dorsey Due, Jr., who was born on October 22, 1934, in Terre Haute, Indiana, was a member of the NAACP College Chapter at Indiana University in the late-1950s, then came to Florida in the fall of 1960 to attend FAMU’s law school and prepare himself for civil rights battles on the legal front. While at FAMU, though he’d been warned by the law school dean not to get involved with Tallahassee’s student protesters, he assisted attorneys in doing research on behalf of arrested students and participated in Freedom Rides to desegregate buses. After finishing law school and becoming member of the Florida Bar, he represented activists for CORE and other organizations; one of his first victories was representing a St. Augustine dentist who had been brutally beaten by the Ku Klux Klan. Due also represented the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St Augustine. He pioneered the tactic of filing Petitions of Removal to move frivolous cases against civil rights workers in Mississippi and Florida from state court to federal court, thus stopping the state’s prosecutions. Due’s presence was so extensive that FBI compiled 400 pages of reports on his activities. He is currently the director of Metro-Dade’s Office of Black Affairs.

Source:    Provided by Tananarive Due.