Recognized as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, she was one of the signatories to "The Treaty of Cambridge", signed in July 1963 with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and state and local officials.

Her mother was part of the affluent St. Clair family of Cambridge, Maryland, which owned and operated a successful grocery store and funeral home.

Most importantly, Gloria's father John Hayes died of a heart attack due to the lack of nearby medical care accessible to blacks.

[8] 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.

[8] In December 1961, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) sent Reginald Robinson and William Hansen to Cambridge to organize civil rights actions.

Dozens of Black high school students, including Richardson's daughter Donna, joined a number of young men and women from Baltimore's Civic Interest Group (CIG) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and two members of the SNCC.

It was a commitment Richardson could not make at the time; therefore, she focused on working with the Black community's secretive and highly efficient intelligence-sharing network, known as the "grapevine".

Through witnessing various demonstrations in support of her daughter's activism, Richardson struggled to remain silent in the face of counter-protestors that mocked the non-violent Civil Rights groups.

She attended workshops, and special sessions where activists methodically trained for non-violence, to withstand the hatred of mobs, who often used slurs and demeaning acts to prevent peaceful assembly.

[3] In June 1962, Richardson was asked to help organize the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), the first adult-led affiliate of SNCC.

After CNAC canvassed African-American communities in a survey, they expanded the goals to work for economic equality: to improve housing, education, employment, and healthcare.

Due to the change in focus of the movement, protests demanded both economic and social equality as Richardson wanted to target discrimination and inequity in employment, poor wages, inferior schools, health care, and segregated facilities.

They wanted to replace state senator Frederick Malkus, who had opposed legislation that would have allowed additional industries into Dorchester County, Maryland.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and other Justice Department and housing officials brokered a five-point "Treaty of Cambridge", to include a statement for equal rights, that was signed in July.

The Attorney General, representatives of the State Of Maryland, local black leadership-including Richardson, and elected Cambridge officials were all signatories.

[4] During that period of time, national publications wrote stories and reports about why Richardson was ludicrous for opposing a citywide referendum because it supposedly allowed Cambridge citizens to vote on equal access to accommodations and housing.

To Richardson and other SNCC members, wearing jeans represented their solidarity with the rural poor, and "it was the default uniform when they boycotted department stores for maintaining segregation".

[4] Gloria Richardson played a big role in the Kennedy administration's decision to work with the CNAC as she initiated a series of negotiations to help Cambridge residents come out from under Jim Crow.

By the summer of 1963, she was living her "egalitarian philosophies concerning community organizing and democracy", and she was willing to risk her family's standing among the black elite to achieve CNAC's goals.

[3] For these reasons, Cambridge's black community acknowledged her as its leader, making her one of few women to achieve that position during the entire civil rights movement.

[3] Richardson claimed that people working for the Kennedy administration tried to intimidate her into leaving the movement by threatening to reveal embarrassing gossip about her, including intimate details about her divorce and her affair.

Present were Bob Moses, Charles Sherrod, Frank Smith, John Lewis, Courtland Cox, Michael Thelwell, Stokely Carmichael, Jim Forman, Dottie Zellner, Ivanhoe Donaldson, Marion Barry, and Joyce Ladner, as well as staff and volunteers.

He offered to integrate schools, ensure that a Black person was "hired in the State Employment Office, make an application for a federal loan for a "Negro housing project", pass a public accommodations ordinance, and name a biracial commission to work on the other problems that could not be solved immediately by legislation", in exchange for a year-long suspension of civil demonstrations.

As a result of this movement, federal dollars began to flow to Cambridge facilities, including parks, schools, streets, public housing, and other projects.

BAF was established by former CNAC members because they felt that Cambridge's "white power system was still impeding progress in all areas of Black residents' lives".

In a 2021 interview with The Washington Post, Richardson recounted that she watched as outrage over the murder of George Floyd prompted thousands to take to the streets.

[6] She believed that these actions remain necessary in America today where Black citizens continue to face inequities in the "criminal justice system, housing, health care, and other areas compared with their White counterparts".

Lopez Matthews Jr., a historian and digital production librarian at Howard University, believes that she is not well-known because "she was a woman who was feisty and who refused to back down.

Five months later, a fireside chat was facilitated by Kisha Petticolas, the co-founder of the Eastern Shore Network for Change (ESNC), at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Resort in Cambridge.

[3] Today, there is a mural placed left of center next to Dorchester native and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman of Gloria boldly demanding justice.