Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Fay Delores Bellamy Powell, "I want to cry but am not able to do so with each death we cry a little less. Soon, we will not cry at all." excerpt from "Soon We Will Not Cry" a poem by Fay Bellamy Powell, Friday, February 22, 2013, 5:30 PM-8:30 PM, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, 101 Auburn Avenue, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia 30303

After a brief marriage to Civil Rights attorney, Len Holt, in Berkeley, CA, she returned South in 1972. She made her way to Atlanta after studying for six months at Malcolm X Liberation University in Greensboro. It was an experiment in independent black education that initially sought to train organizers to join liberation struggles in Africa. Bringing a heightened Pan African consciousness, she joined with the African Liberation Support Committee to organize both the national (1972) and local African Liberation Day (1973) demonstrations - events that laid the groundwork for a broad-based anti-apartheid movement in the US. She also worked as an intern at the Institute of the Black World.
Fay then set upon strengthening human rights and justice struggles with infrastructure and stability, giving special focus to cultural work, communications, and community access to airwaves. She co-founded Radio Free GA (WRFG-FM), serving on the Board and hosting a popular show, "lns;de-Out," that combined jazz with news, social commentary, and interviews with people of color from the African diaspora to uplift concerns of African people across the globe. Lasting 26 years, her show focused initially on prison issues and gained a significant following of inmates at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, to whom she appealed, "Get your pencils out. I'm go;ng to g;ve you some ;nformat;on." She also served as president of the Board and member of the Advisory Committee of People TV. Endeavoring to bring greater resources to community arts and organizing, she was a founding member with Bernice Reagan, Guy Carawan, and Dorothy Cotton of the grantmaking committee of Highlander's We Shall Overcome Fund. As a member of the first board of directors of the Fund for Southern Communities, she helped to establish it as a sustaining funding source for community organizing in three Southern states.
Following the resurgence of KKK terror in 1979, in AL and NC, Fay helped form the National Anti Klan Network (later the Center for Democratic Renewal) with Rev. C.T. Vivian and a host of veteran activists . They organized a national protest of the Klan/neo-Nazi murders of five anti-racist activists in Greensboro, NC. Her calm in the midst of chaos helped bring together opposing forces within the Movement that had been deeply fractured by nearly a decade of sectarianism. Over the next 25 years, NAKN/CDR served as a national resource for local communities and media, generating information, organizing strategies and interventions, and policy to counter hate violence and bigotry. In 1985, Fay traveled to Africa to attend the NGO Women's Forum in Nairobi, Kenya. The trip strengthened her resolve to support justice for all people and to take up women's struggles for recognition, emancipation and freedom from abuse. Again in the 1990s, she expanded her international realm by traveling to Hungary to support the Roma's struggles against discrimination.

Fay's enduring legacy includes her creative works, particularly her photography, writings and interviews. In addition to social struggles, her camera documented the role of black construction workers in the transformation of Atlanta's skyline and captured striking examples of nature's design and brilliant colors. Although she worked for over 30 years at David Franklin's entertainment law firm, which managed high end clients, she was an entrepreneur at heart. She formed Bel Ami Services (later renamed Bel Pow to reflect her partnership with William) to market her works and help other artists market theirs. She sold greeting cards and holistic health products, framed art, and ran a personal courier service. Her reflections on SNCC appeared in Hands on the Freedom Plow, (201 0) and in various recorded interviews that are accessible on-line. She wrote a collection of poems for children, entitled, Being Me Is A Gas, that also has an audio version with music. Lastly, Fay's legacy rests in the young people that she actively mentored, and especially to many black women she groomed, who have felt honored by her "Hey Babe" greeting and empowered by her wisdom and feisty example of never feeling less than anyone. They have imbibed her humble leadership style and are certain to carry forth her commitment to organizing to meet the challenges of their generations.
In 1992, Fay married William Powell, Stanley Wise's first cousin, who became her lifelong partner. During 1995, she and William attended the first Million Man March in Washington D.C., and Fay insisted on participating specifically "because Farrakhan did not invite women to attend." She also brought a delegation of women to Philadelphia for the Million Women's March in 1997.
Fay is survived by her loving husband, William Powell; her brother Garland Bellamy (Atlanta); her first cousins Mary Watkins aka "Jockey" (Gary, Indiana); William Bellamy (Newark); Valgene Hamlin (Minneapolis); Kenneth Hamlin (Pittsburgh); Spike Hamlin, (Cleveland); Ralph Hamlin and Kenneth Cook (DC); and many friends .

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Excerpt from "Soon We Will Not Cry," a poem by Fay Bellamy Powell
Friday, February 22, 2013 5:30PM-8:30PM
Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History
101 Auburn Avenue, N.E. Atlanta, GA 30303

:..:..:JAZZ SELECTIONS by Ojeda Penn :::SANKONSCIOUS DRUMMERS

LIBATION.......................... .................................................................................................................. Akinyele Umoja
OPENING REMARKS..................................................................................................................................Leah Wise Michael Simmons
WELCOME................................................ ........................Francine Henderson, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History
INTRODUCTION OF TRIBUTES .............................................................................................................Leah Wise
Michael Simmons
+ Co-founder, We Shall Overcome Fund............................................... ...................Bernice Johnson Reagan + SNCC & Human Rights Activist.. ...........................................................................................Wendell Paris
Doris Derby + Institute of the Black World & Photographer...............................................................................Sue Ross + Co-founder, WRFG................... ........................ .......................... .........................Imam Nadim Sulaiman Ali + Role Model/Mentor................................. ...... ..... ...................................................Tufara Waller Muhammad + Childhood Friends & Family...............................................................................................Charlene Nelson
Ralph Hamlin IN FAY' S WORDS...............................................................................................................................Audio & Images SHARING MEMORIES .................................................................................................... .. ...... ....................Audience CLOSING REMARKS .................. .............. ..... .. .... ......................................................................................Leah Wise
Michael Simmons

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the numerous organizations and individuals who contributed to this celebration of our beloved Fay. Let us embrace her legacy and continue the fight for justice. The Planning Committee -- Karima Al-Amin, Joyce Brown, Valinda Johnson Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, Michelle D. Kourouma, William Powell, and Leah Wise -- extends special appreciation to the following organizations for their support:

: African American Studies Department at Georgia State University
: Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History
: Best Communication Strategies : Hammonds House Museum

: Highlander Research and Education Center : Human Rights Research Fund : Mississippi Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement : SNCC Legacy Project : We Shall Overcome Fund : WRFG-FM, 89.3 Atlanta

January 4, 2013, Fay Delores Bellamy Powell, one oft e South's amazing lifelong organizers for human rights, justice and liberation of African peoples, succumbed to pancreatic cancer. In the tradition of unsung community sheroes, she exemplified a "women of color" outlook on organizing: it's how you live life; it's how you live justice to win justice. Rarely out front, Fay provided backbone leadership, lending a steadfastness that kept the machine moving. She touched both men and women in ways that left them awestruck. They were taken in by her warmth, generosity, and abiding intolerance for stupidity,
ignorance, injustice and abuse: "She was steps above other women. She had a different kind of talk. She was fine, but your mind moved off fine ... because she would challenge you to think. It was an awakening. She commanded attention, but she wasn't about self." And,
she could signify and play the dozens with the best.
Fay was intentional about displaying compassion and respect, speaking with honey rather than vinegar most times, though her words could feel acerbic if you weren't open to truths. A sister soldier, she had your back. Fay was not drawn to trendy material things and could make do in simple settings. People were attracted to her bearing, her eloquence, her openness to learning, her common-sense clarity and ability to sort through confusion as well as her strength to voice objections to women's oppression with a
simple dismissal "it makes no sense."
Fay was born May 3, 1938 to Marlbro and Pearl Fordham Bellamy, in Clairton, PA, a steel town located in the shadows of Pittsburgh. After her mother died, when Fay was four, she was raised by her aunts and uncle who ran a 22-room rooming house that sold liquor and dinners to millworkers on pay day. She graduated from Clairton High School and attended business college in Pittsburgh . Fay credited her aunt's loving, nurturing upbringing and her early exposure to the worldly ways of adults as grounding her with a sense of stability, confidence, and comfort with people. As she matured, her fearlessness, optimism and practical approaches to life, helped forti fy her to face t he dangers of the Civil Rights Movement.
n her formative years, she was not particularly political, though injustices inflamed her when they came to her attention. After a stint in the Air Force, she moved from city to city for a few years, enjoying life, until the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four black girls in 1963. That event signaled "playtime is over." She left San Francisco seeking to join the Movement and eventually found SNCC in New York. Mindful of her keen office skills, in 1965, Ruby Doris sent her to staff SNCC's field office in Selma, known then as one of the worst "hot spots."
Working with project directors, John Love and later Silas Norman, Fay soon became the glue of the field operation that held demonstrations every other day, coordinating information flow, logistics, and documentation. She participated in the second Selma to Montgomery March, and gained notoriety along with Silas Norman for bringing Malcolm X to Selma to speak at Brown Chapel. It was one of those peak experiences because

Malcolm expressed a desire to work with SNCC, intentions that his assassination a few weeks later eclipsed.
Fay seated next to Malcolm X at Selma's Brown A. M.E. Chapel while Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth speaks on February 4, 1965.
Ever eager to learn, Fay accompanied Cynthia Washington to Green County, AL. Living in a freedom house, guarded at times by a volunteer sentinel, they walked from farm to farm, organizing sharecroppers to vote and to sue the county Agricultural Extension agency for economic exploitation. Afterwards, she joined SNCC's national staff at the headquarters in Atlanta, working in the communications department and assisting James Forman and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). She
initiated the newsletter, The Afrkanamerkan," as a
vehicle to even out information flow and build unity between office and field staff. She also volunteered many nights in the law office of SNCC's attorney, Howard Moore, Jr.
In 1966, she accompanied a SNCC delegation to the USSR, visiting both European and Central Asian cities. It was an opportunity that resulted from her challenging leadership to extend invitations to travel abroad to rank n-file staffers. The trip broadened her perspective of liberation struggles. Fay was elected to SNCC's Coordinating Committee and its Executive Committee, where she voiced strong support for black power, African liberation struggles (the Boycott Gulf Campaign) , Palestinian independence, and protesting the Vietnam War. In 1967, she was the only woman to ever run for SNCC's chairmanship. That year, she was arrested at a demonstration against police brutality i n Atlanta's black Summerhill neighborhood and got in an altercation with a sheriff. The incident taught her that she should concentrate her energies in organizing activities other than demonstrations because she couldn't control her instincts to fight back when attacked.
ay was captivated by the Movement's "very positive, dynamic, stimulating environment" and especially the
music. She found Movement men and women "just magnificent" and was "impressed by their intellect, their organizational capabWties, and their willingness to try the untried." Like a sponge, she absorbed lessons of
people-centered community organizing and grassroots leadership, witnessing with respect the capacity of seemingly penniless and powerless people living under siege to protect one another, face fear head on, direct their own freedom struggle, make a way out of no way, and in the process transform their lives. This orientation informed her organizing for years to come.