Meta Ellis

  • Interview by Rose Norman and Micki Beth Stiller in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 17, 2023
Meta Ellis speaking at the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019.
Meta Ellis speaking at the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019. Credit: Mickey Welsh, Montgomery Advertiser

Meta Ellis (they, their), born in 1952 in Los Angeles, California, a lifelong activist in California; Arizona; Ohio; Washington, DC; and currently in Montgomery, Alabama. Meta was the oldest of seven children whose parents’ activism was a model. Her father, Reverend Robert Graetz, a Lutheran minister, moved the family from state to state. The whole family was involved in social justice activism.

Meta Ellis was three years old when the church sent the Rev. Graetz to Montgomery, Alabama, as minister to a predominately Black Lutheran church. They lived in a neighborhood near Rosa Parks. Rev. Graetz became the only white minister to support the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. The Graetz’s home was bombed twice in the aftermath of integration of Montgomery buses [public transportation].

The Graetz family moved to Ohio in 1958, and then Washington, DC, for Meta’s high school years. Meta Ellis became especially active in protest marches while in high school in Washington, DC.

Meta Ellis is currently the director of Montgomery Pride United in Alabama, and Meta is the cofounder of the Bayard Rustin Community Center, run by Montgomery Pride United. Meta represented Alabama in the edition of USA Today’s “State By State: Faces of Pride,” June 30, 2017. In 2018, Meta was corecipient of the 2018 Billy Jack Gaither Humanitarian Award.

See also:
https://montgomeryprideunited.org/our-team