You know, I just made it very clear to the governor that I did not represent the total black community, that I was black and I had my own background, my own training and experience. And whatever answer I gave to him would be based on all of those things. And the way I thought that we should work would be to have me call up some people, you know, and get advice on how we should go about doing certain things.
—Rita Jackson Samuels, April 30, 1974.
When she made that statement to the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Rita Samuels was all of 29 years old. But already she appeared to know precisely what she was doing and how she’d get it done.
In the previous 10 years she'd been secretary to Fred C. Bennette at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She'd been with the Rev. Martin Luther King on many of his epochal marches and speeches, including the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. During the time of the interview above, she was the first black woman to serve on the staff of a Georgia governor, in this case Gov. Jimmy Carter.
“Nobody in the black community knew who Jimmy Carter was,” said Henrietta Antoinin, Samuels’ close friend for over a half century. “It was Rita who introduced him to Coretta King, Daddy King, Andy Young, John Lewis and all the others. After that, black people everywhere rallied around Carter.”
Read the AJC’s special work on remembering MLK Jr. here.
It’s almost impossible crystalizing Samuels’ career. She’d later serve as a consultant on Carter’s White House Staff in 1977. She was a confidant of nearly every major Atlanta civil rights leader, and in the words of longtime Channel 2 Action News television anchor Monica Kaufman Pearson, “She was just as strong willed as they were.”
She founded a number of women’s organizations while tackling issues ranging from women’s rights to civil rights, voting rights and politics.
“She chewed out Zell Miller something awful when he turned Republican,” Antoinin said.
Rita Jackson Samuels, 72, died of congestive heart failure March 27. Visitation is 6 to 8 p.m. April 6 at Gregory Levett & Sons Funeral Home, 4347 Flat Shoals Parkway, Decatur. The funeral is noon, April 7, at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, 407 Auburn Ave NE, Atlanta.
Within hours of her death, tributes began pouring in, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “She has been a freedom fighter for all of her life and she will be missed.”
Former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young told the AJC, “[Samuels] was one of the joys and inspirations of the civil rights movement. If anything was wrong, she could cuss you out and straighten you out and make you laugh and not feel any hard feelings about it.
“She was always trying to fight for women and for people who were not appreciated,” he added … “There was not a political campaign of mine that she did not find a way to give support.”
Through The Carter Center, former President Jimmy Carter issued this statement: “Rosalynn and I are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Rita Samuels. She was a trailblazer and a highly effective public servant. She was committed to making the world a better place for others. I am deeply grateful for her service during my years as governor and president. We extend our condolences to her family and friends.”
When Carter was governor, Samuels encouraged him to erect a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King — and later 19th-century African Americans Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and Lucy Craft Laney — inside the state Capitol.
“I remember driving to the ceremony when they were going to hang Dr. King’s portrait,” Antoinin said. “When I got to the Capitol, the Ku Klux Klan was picketing outside. I was afraid to get out of the car, so I drove to a pay phone and was able to reach Rita. She told me, “Just get over here cause I’m gonna come out there and meet you myself.’ “
Later on, Samuels founded and became executive director of the Georgia Coalition of Black Women, whose primary focus was on registering black women to vote. Then for the last 20 years the Samuels-created Women Flying High has been helping black women land major contracts with the city and state.
Among other endeavors, she started a girls computer camp, a “Women in Government Internship Program” and also commissioned the writing of biographies for every Georgia first lady, which are housed in the state archives.
“Rita was a fighter,” Antoinin said. “Her whole dream was to see black women excel, get equal opportunities in jobs and running for public office. She wrote letters to companies if she thought they were discriminating against black women. Listen, if you stepped on her toes, don’t think she wouldn’t holler back.”
Samuels was born in Forsyth, Ga., April 25, 1945, the youngest of five children. She lived mostly with her maternal grandmother after her mother died when she was four.
“We lived on Highway 41 when it was the main highway before interstate days,” said Estella Jackson, Rita’s oldest sister. “We lived in a raggedy house that had a cement block instead of a front step. We’d sit out there and watch the white people drive their Cadillacs to Florida, and Rita would say, ‘I’m gonna have one of those cars.’ “
She graduated from segregated Hubbard High in 1963 then went to Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, only to leave after a couple of years.
“I think,” said Estella, “she was in too big a hurry. “She was never patient. She needed to get going and start fighting for civil rights.”
She apparently never stopped. According to her niece Paris Murphy-Doctor, Samuels was still taking calls for Women Flying High up until two weeks before her death.
She never had children. She and her husband, the general contractor Stanley Samuels — they married in 1972 — were longtime members of Ebenezer. Her funeral takes place nearly 50 years to the day after Martin Luther King’s funeral (April 9, 1968) in the same building.
“When I walk into Ebenezer, a chill comes over the body,” Henrietta Antoinin said. “Mostly I think about how grateful I am to still be alive. We’ve lost so many great ones, and now we’ve lost another. I get teary eyed thinking about how much I’m going to miss her.”
Rita Samuels is survived by her husband Stanley Samuels and her siblings Estella Jackson, half brother Joseph Crowder Sr. and half sister June Danson.
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