Hartford, Bruce

Bruce Hartford  was active with several Civil Rights Movement organizations in the 1960s including SCLC, CORE and SNCC. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, January 15, 1944 to Communist Party activist and union organizer parents, and he grew up in Los Angeles, California.  Bruce became aware of social injustice in part through the experiences of his parents during the Red Scare, and when he was young he saw the early events of the civil rights movement play out on television.  In Los Angeles, Bruce joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), motivated by the injustices he heard about in local housing and schools, and Bruce participated in marches and sit-ins in Torrance during this time.   Now firmly entrenched in CORE, he headed to Selma, Alabama to work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He helped keep order during the infamous march from Selma to Montgomery. In 1963 he attended the March on Washington, and here he gives a first person perspective on one of history’s great days.  Bruce also worked on voting rights initiatives in Dallas and Crenshaw Counties, Alabama and in Grenada, Mississippi. He and fellow civil rights workers literally put their lives on the line:  they were attacked by Klan members and hunted down by local mobs, they were jailed and assaulted with the collusion of local police, and fellow civil rights workers that Bruce befriended were even murdered in this difficult period of American history.  Later in the 60s Bruce was actively involved in the antiwar movement too, working with organizations like SDS and MOBE.  Later, Bruce became a founding member and longtime officer in the National Writers Union while developing a career as a technical writer in Silicon Valley.  He joined Mr. Masters’ American History class via zoom in April 2024, sharing his stories from and viewpoints on the 1960s.