Palatine man tells of his uncle's tie to the 'Freedom Diploma'

With the release of the movie "Selma" a few months ago, Hugh Gallagher said he wants people to know about a related event and the role his uncle played in it.

"I think it's a great story that has never been told," he said of his uncle's work designing the "Freedom Diploma."

Gallagher, 76, of Palatine said the diploma was for a ceremony for black high school students in Alabama who were denied graduation because they were involved in the march from Selma to Montgomery seeking voting rights in March 1965.

The 50th anniversary of the graduation ceremony is this Saturday and Sunday.

The uncle, Carl Benkert of Birmingham, Michigan, who died five years ago, was an interior designer who worked on many commercial buildings in Chicago and regularly visited the Gallaghers when he was here on projects.

Benkert was active in the Selma march for voting rights, going south with a group of clergy from the Detroit area, carrying a camera and a tape recorder to document what he saw.

His work with the battery-operated, reel-to-reel tape recorder made history in the form of the album, "Freedom Songs," which has never been out of print and which captures songs sung by marchers that have been used in protests ever since.

"Music was an essential element," Benkert wrote, according to an article earlier this year by a writer for smithsonian.com, which has acquired the rights to publish the music. "Music in song expressing hope and sorrow; music to pacify or excite; music with the power to engage the intelligence and even touch the spirit."

Some of the music from the album was used in the movie "Selma."

A couple of months after the march, Hosea Williams and James Orange, close associates of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., arranged the graduation ceremony at Brown Chapel in Selma. Benkert designed the diploma and photographed the event, according to notes he kept that have been passed on to Gallagher, along with photos.

"Black high school students had participated in demonstrations, picketing and boycotts," Benkert wrote. "Many had been arrested and jailed in Selma or at Camp Selma, a state prison farm. School authorities warned that the graduating class would not receive diplomas."

Gallagher said he can find almost no record of the event. In one of the few references, a story in African American Golfers Digest profiling amateur golfer Ron Fuller talks of his work on the Freedom March and how he received the Freedom Diploma.

"Of all of the honorable citations and awards that have been presented to me over the years, this is still the one I cherish the highest," said Fuller, who also holds The Air Force Commendation Medal for Meritorious Service in Vietnam.

Gallagher said he is proud of his uncle and wants to be sure this slice of history isn't forgotten. But Benkert didn't talk about his Selma experiences during his family visits.

"He never really told anybody," Gallagher said.