a phrase applicable to minorities in other places as well. When she divorced from Harry Richardson, she was a mother with two daughters. She worked at a pharmacy and grocery store owned by her family in a predominantly Black community. Richardson has said that her motherhood sparked her activist role. Richardson held a formal office in the Cambridge Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (CNCC). She also served as an adult adviser to the CNCC. At one point she was the only Black woman to head a local civil rights agency. When she became co-chair of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), she began to identify goals beyond desegregation. She sought economic and social justice in housing, education, job opportunity, and health care. While co-chairing CNAC, Richardson gained insight into who to trust in the process of negotiating the expansion of rights of the Black community in Cambridge. During her early activism, Richardson was arrested three times. When she was first arrested, Judge W. Laird described her tactics as "a disgrace to her family's name", attempting to shame her into silence. She continued to fight back harder. She was known for verbal attacks, describing national leaders as presenting "meaningless smiles" due to their failure to gain substantial change. Cambridge movement In December 1961, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) sent Reginald Robinson and William Hansen to Cambridge to organize civil rights actions. SNCC had been contacted by activists in the city. The two young men started sit-ins in February to protest segregated facilities. They targeted movie theaters, bowling alleys, and restaurants. Donna Richardson, Gloria's daughter, was among students who supported the demonstrators. Richardson and Yolanda Sinclair, also mother of a protester, were among parents who wanted to show their support for these actions. In 1961, a Freedom Ride came to Cambridge. The black city council member had attempted to discourage the campaign by insisting that the city was already desegregated. At first Richardson rarely participated in civil disobedience, because she could not accept the original SNCC nonviolence rules. By 1962, the Civil Rights movement was picking up steam around the country. Students attempted to desegregate public facilities in Cambridge. At the time, the city had a population of around 11,000, of whom about one-third were Black. The initial protests, including picketing and sit-ins, were peaceful. Although White supremacists attacked demonstrators, police arrested the protestors. The protests did not yield results until Richardson was