Stuart (Stu) House was born into a northern Black middle-class family in Detroit, far away from the unfolding Civil Rights Movement in the South. One evening in 1960, he turned on the television news and watched in awe as young students in the South nonviolently sat-in at restaurants only to be hauled off to jail by white police officers. Realizing how Black people had been systematically discriminated against and disenfranchised for generations, Stuart, then 17, went to Mississippi to join the Movement.

During his time in the Delta, he promoted Black cultural, political, and intellectual thought as a musician. Later on, he devoted most of his attention to voter rights projects in Alabama, where he was arrested in Selma for encouraging Black voters.

Stuart attributes the courage and fearlessness of ordinary men and women for his involvement in the struggle for Civil Rights. “I think that their sacrifice also emboldened us to keep on fighting, to keep on struggling, because they lost their lives.”

Today, Stuart lives in Northern California where he is the Director of Facilities for the Orinda Union School District.