Towards Justice

Towards Justice: Ken Cloke

Hannah Simpson Season 1 Episode 4

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0:00 | 23:42

Ken Cloke was a vocal civil rights activist on his campus at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s. He helped organize Freedom Rides, supported sit-ins and worked closely with John Lewis, the President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1964, Ken ventured down to the South to continue his fight for racial justice. As a young law student, Ken worked as a clerk for the renowned civil rights attorney C.B. King in Albany, Georgia, and worked with the pioneering activist, Charles Sherrod. 

While in southern Alabama, Ken was involved in a protest where he and other activists were trapped inside a church for several days while the KKK and an angry mob waited outside. This incident, among others, are why Ken considers the movement to be one of the most consequential experiences of his life. In the decades since, he has campaigned tirelessly for social justice in the United States and abroad. Today, Ken is a world-renowned conflict resolution mediator.