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Miss Phyllis Garland Johnson Publications 1820 South Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois
January 14, 1970
Dear Miss Garland:
Tonight I was leafing through the paperback version of your excellent book, the Sound of Soul and came across - on page 40 and 41 - the song, "We'll Never Turn Back". I thought you might like to know something about the song's author.
Her name is Bertha Gober, and she would be about 27 or 28 today. Some years ago, she went to Albany State College, and was arrested in the first civil rights demonstration that town ever saw. Bertha was a member of the college NAACP youth group, and agreed to sit-in at the bus station in 1961; she was arrested, and sent to jail.
After working for SNCC in Albany for short time, she came to Atlanta where she worked in the national office where I also worked. She was a tiny girl, probably no more than 90 pounds, literally, but she had a magnificent voice. She tried to become a singer, and appeared in a local club, now defunct.
She wrote more than that song, and it became SNCC's theme, partly because everyone loved Bertha and partly because we thought the song expressed what SNCC was between 1961 and 1964.
Bertha had an unhappy love affair, and became an alcoholic; like so many young people who passed through SNCC, she wasn't able to face the daily grind that meant hearing first hand that a friend had been beaten or shot at and you couldn't do anything about it.
No one knows where she is now; but she is one of the hundreds of black girls (or boys) who could have made it had they only had the chance.
I don't know why I'm writing this to you, but seeing that song in print reminded me of Bertha. She recorded once with the SNCC Freedom Singers. If you can locate an especially good record store, you can see her on the cover and hear her on the record they issued on the Mercury label.
At any rate, I thought you'd be interested.
Sincerely,