Chude Pam Allen

Chude Pam Allen was born September 17, 1943 and grew up in a semi-rural area of eastern Pennsylvania near the New Jersey border. She attended Carleton College in Minnesota. In the spring of 1964, Chude attended a term at Spelman College, a historically black women's college in Atlanta, Georgia as one of only 13 white exchange students. That summer, she was recruited and trained by SNCC to go to Mississippi where she taught at a Freedom School in Holly Springs during the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign. She also worked in the Atlanta SNCC office and participated in demonstrations in Atlanta while an exchange student that spring. After graduating from college, Chude helped organize women's liberation groups, first in New York City and then in San Francisco. She also worked with the San Francisco-based Union Women's Alliance to Gain Equality, advocating for better working conditions. In 1989, she helped organize the 25th anniversary of the Mississippi Summer Project in the Bay Area sparking new work with veterans around civil rights education. Chude is one of the founding members of the Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement where she continues to work.