Patricia Stephens Due

Patricia Stephens Due (December 9, 1939 – February 7, 2012) was one of the leading African-American civil rights activists in her home state of Florida. Along with her sister Priscilla and others trained in nonviolent protest by CORE, Due spent 49 days in one of the nation's first jail-ins, refusing to pay a fine for sitting in a Woolworth's "White only" lunch counter in Tallahassee, Florida in 1960. Her eyes were damaged from tear gas used by police on students protesting such arrests, so she wore dark glasses for the rest of her life. She served in many leadership roles in CORE and the NAACP, fighting against segregated stores, buses, theaters, schools, restaurants, and hotels, protesting unjust laws, and leading one of the most dangerous voter registration efforts in the country in northern Florida in the 1960s.

With her daughter, Tananarive, Due wrote Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, documenting the struggle she participated in, initially as a student at Florida A&M University, and later working for civil rights organizations and Florida communities, sometimes in partnership with her husband, civil rights attorney John D. Due, Jr.

Patricia Stephens was born on December 9, 1939, in Quincy, Florida to Lottie Mae Powell and Horace Walter Stephens. Due's parents were both involved in civic activities. Stephens' stepfather was a high school civics teachers in the segregated Everglades Vocational High School, and Lottie registered people to vote and conducted petition drives. Patricia was the second of three children.

At Florida A&M University, Patricia Stephens Due's academic progress was disrupted because of her devotion to non-violent protest. Due enrolled at FAMU in 1957. Due to her many arrests and pressure from state authorities, Patricia was suspended from FAMU multiple times. While on campus, Patricia served as a CORE field secretary, overseeing voter registration drives across ten counties in North Florida. As a result of her involvement, more Black individuals registered to vote there than any other region in the South.

In 1963, after her jail-in, Patricia married John D. Due Jr., a FAMU law student who became a prominent civil rights attorney. The couple gained the nickname "Mr. and Mrs. Civil Rights" because of their commitment to advancing the well-being of Black Americans. They even spent their honeymoon participating in the 1963 March on Washington. The couple had three daughters: Tananarive, Johnita and Lydia.

After ten years from her initial enrollment, Patricia graduated from FAMU with a bachelor's degree in 1967. Decades later, the university honored her with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 2006, recognizing her five decades of activism.

Due and her sister Priscilla started fighting segregation when Due was 13 by insisting on being served at the "WHITE" window of their local Dairy Queen (name of business: The Polar Bear) in Belle Glade, instead of the "COLORED" window.

During the summer of 1959, the sisters attended a nonviolent resistance workshop organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Miami. Following the Miami Interraction Action Institute workshop, Patricia and Priscilla Stephens co-founded the Tallahassee CORE chapter. The Stephens sisters had help from Daisy Young, the NAACP advisor on FAMU's campus. Young assisted the sisters by recruiting white students from Florida State University and allowing them to attend a Inter-Civic Council meeting to spread the word about CORE. On November 7, 1959, the eighteen active members of CORE completed their first project, testing the seating policy on city buses. After sitting at the front of the bus, they realized the Tallahassee bus boycott had been mostly successful. Patricia and other CORE members would complete several other projects, such as attempting to purchase interstate bus tickets in the whites-only waiting rooms of the Greyhound and Trailways bus stations, leading up to the Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins.