About Judy
Film producer and former SNCC activist, Judy Richardson grew up in the “under the hill” section of Tarrytown. Her father helped organize the United Auto Workers (UAW) local at the Chevrolet plant in Tarrytown and died “on the line” when she was seven years old. Judy was accepted to Swarthmore College on a full, four-year scholarship. Later, Richardson would also attend Columbia University, Howard University and Antioch College.
During her freshman year at Swarthmore, Richardson joined the Swarthmore Political Action Committee (SPAC), an SDS affiliate.
In 1963, Richardson traveled by bus on weekends, with other SPAC volunteers to assist the Cambridge, Maryland, community desegregate public accommodations. She led the Cambridge Movement, with the assistance of SNCC field secretaries. Judy joined the SNCC staff and left college to work first in SNCC’s national office in Atlanta. When the national office moved to Mississippi, during 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, she moved, too. She also worked with SNCC s projects in Lowndes County, Alabama and in Southwest Georgia.
In 1965, she became office manager for Julian Bond’s successful first campaign for the Georgia House of Representatives. She also organized a northern “Freedom School” to bring together young activists from SNCC’s Southern projects and Northern support offices.
In 1968, Richardson and other former SNCC staffers founded Drum and Spear Bookstore in Washington, D.C. It became the largest Black Judy Richardson bookstore in the country. She was also Children’s Editor of Drum & Spear Press.
In 1970, she wrote an essay on racism in Black children’s books, published by Howard University’s Journal of Negro Education.
In 1979, Judy began working with Henry Hampton/Blackside Productions on an early version of what became the Eyes On The Prize series. Major production for that Academy Award nominated, six-hour PBS series began in l986, and she became researcher and content advisor. For Eyes On The Prize II, she was Series Associate Producer.
Beginning in 1982, she was director of information for the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, participating in its protests against police brutality in New York City and its bus caravans to the Alabama black belt to counter the Reagan Administration’s intimidation of elderly African American voters. Judy later co-produced Blackside’s 1994 Emmy and Peabodv Award-winning documentary, Malcolm X: Make It Plain (for PBS’ The American Experience). Currently a senior producer for Northern Light Productions in Boston, Richardson produces historical documentaries for broadcast and museums, with a focus on African American historical events, including: a one-hour documentary on the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre (South Carolina) for PBS; two History Channel documentaries on slavery and slave resistance; and installations for, among others, the National Park Service’s Little Rock Nine Visitor’s Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Cincinnati), the New York State Historical Society’s “Slavery in New York” exhibit, and the Paul Laurence Dunbar House (Dayton).
Richardson has also edited, with five other SNCC women, Hands on the Freedom Plow: The Personal Testimonies of Women in SNCC. The work includes the courageous stories of over fifty SNCC women.
Judy is the recipient of an Image Award for Vision and Excellence from Women in Film and Video. She lectures, writes and conducts professional development workshops for teachers about the history and values of the Civil Rights Movement and their relevance to issues we face today.
