Black History Month – Larry & Jereline Bethune

By: |Published on: Feb 19, 2021

Larry & Jereline Bethune:

  • The Bethune’s restaurant, Brenda’s Bar-B-Que Pit, served as the unofficial center for Montgomery, Alabama’s Civil Rights Movement; holding meetings with NAACP leaders and organizing and promoting boycotts, including Rosa Parks’ infamous Bus Boycott.
  • Jereline Bethune quietly held lessons to teach African-Americans to read so they could pass the literacy test (a way to suppress the black vote during the height of the Jim Crow era.
  • Jereline also participated in the Selma to Montgomery March that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 

“Let’s learn how to read. Let’s learn how to vote. Let’s go after our own rights so we never have to be treated in a way that we’re not equal to again.”  

— Donetta Bethune

Granddaughter of Larry & Jereline Bethune

Source: AL.com