This week in Council I was able to read a statement into the record honouring the life of Jack O’Dell, civil rights leader, labour activist, peace activist, beloved partner of Jane Power, and friend and inspiration to so many of us. Rest in power, Jack.
Below is the full statement (I had to shorten it a bit to fit into my speaking time), drafted together with Jack’s friends Charlie Demers and Ian Rocksborough-Smith.
This week in Council I was able to read a statement into the record honouring the life of Jack O'Dell, civil rights leader, labour activist, peace activist, beloved partner of Jane Power, and friend and inspiration to so many of us. Rest in power, Jack. Below is the full statement (I had to shorten it a bit to fit into my speaking time), drafted together with Jack's friends Charlie Demers and Ian Rocksborough-Smith.–"This past week, the world lost one of its citizens most committed to peace, justice, and equality — a largely unsung but instrumental figure in the American Civil Rights movement, the labour movement, and the anti-nuclear movement, who called Vancouver home for nearly three decades. On October 31st, Hunter Pitts O’Dell, better known as Jack O’Dell, died in palliative care at Vancouver General Hospital at the age of 96 — outlasting the FBI directors who targeted him & the Jim Crow system that he helped to dismantle. In the 1940s, as a young merchant marine, O’Dell joined the radically anti-segregationist National Maritime Union, an experience that he later said was one of the great lessons of his life. A member of the Communist Party of America at the height of the McCarthyist witch hunt, Jack left the party at the end of the 1950s in order to work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As one of Dr. King’s close lieutenants, his work focused on voter registration as well as fundraising, including organizing a star-studded Rat Pack at Carnegie Hall in 1961, which featured Sammy Davis Jr. & Frank Sinatra, and raised more that $35,000 for the Civil Rights movement. Targeted for his history in the Communist Party by both the FBI and the Kennedy brothers, and not wishing to endanger the fight for Civil Rights, Jack O’Dell joined the editorial board of the journal Freedomways, where he would go on to write the first editorial against the Vietnam War to appear in an African-American periodical. A mentor to the Reverend Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., Jack spent the conservative years of the 1980s building the Rainbow Coalition & PUSH, People United to Save Humanity, and was one of five organizers of a one million person march against nuclear weapons in New York City. In the early 1990s, Jack moved to Kitsilano with his wife, Jane Power — where they have both continued to be committed to progressive causes and campaigns.I was deeply privileged to have called Jack a parishioner when I was a United Church minister, and in his Vancouver years he continued his role as a teacher and mentor for many, from all walks of life. A guiding light for Vancouver scholars of African-American history, such as Drs. Karen Ferguson of SFU & Ian Rocksborough-Smith of the University of the Fraser Valley, Jack was also an instrumental figure in the life of Vancouver writer and comedian Charlie Demers. The subject of a documentary screened at DOXA directed by local filmmaker Rami Katz & featuring the voice of local singer Dawn Pemberton, last year O’Dell also met with members of Black Lives Matter – Vancouver, BC posing for photographs & celebrating the continuity in the battle for equality.Today we remember Jack O’Dell as a citizen of our city, who left it far richer for his time in it.
“This past week, the world lost one of its citizens most committed to peace, justice, and equality — a largely unsung but instrumental figure in the American Civil Rights movement, the labour movement, and the anti-nuclear movement, who called Vancouver home for nearly three decades.
On October 31st, Hunter Pitts O’Dell, better known as Jack O’Dell, died in palliative care at Vancouver General Hospital at the age of 96 — outlasting the FBI directors who targeted him & the Jim Crow system that he helped to dismantle.
In the 1940s, as a young merchant marine, O’Dell joined the radically anti-segregationist National Maritime Union, an experience that he later said was one of the great lessons of his life. A member of the Communist Party of America at the height of the McCarthyist witch hunt, Jack left the party at the end of the 1950s in order to work with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As one of Dr. King’s close lieutenants, his work focused on voter registration as well as fundraising, including organizing a star-studded Rat Pack at Carnegie Hall in 1961, which featured Sammy Davis Jr. & Frank Sinatra, and raised more that $35,000 for the Civil Rights movement.
Targeted for his history in the Communist Party by both the FBI and the Kennedy brothers, and not wishing to endanger the fight for Civil Rights, Jack O’Dell joined the editorial board of the journal Freedomways, where he would go on to write the first editorial against the Vietnam War to appear in an African-American periodical.
A mentor to the Reverend Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., Jack spent the conservative years of the 1980s building the Rainbow Coalition & PUSH, People United to Save Humanity, and was one of five organizers of a one million person march against nuclear weapons in New York City. In the early 1990s, Jack moved to Kitsilano with his wife, Jane Power — where they have both continued to be committed to progressive causes and campaigns.
I was deeply privileged to have called Jack a parishioner when I was a United Church minister, and in his Vancouver years he continued his role as a teacher and mentor for many, from all walks of life. A guiding light for Vancouver scholars of African-American history, such as Drs. Karen Ferguson of SFU & Ian Rocksborough-Smith of the University of the Fraser Valley, Jack was also an instrumental figure in the life of Vancouver writer and comedian Charlie Demers. The subject of a documentary screened at DOXA directed by local filmmaker Rami Katz & featuring the voice of local singer Dawn Pemberton, last year O’Dell also met with members of Black Lives Matter – Vancouver, BC posing for photographs & celebrating the continuity in the battle for equality.
Today we remember Jack O’Dell as a citizen of our city, who left it far richer for his time in it.
