On February 1st, 1960, four Black college students in Greensboro NC sat down at the segregated Woolworth's lunch counter and refused to leave. From that spark, a firestorm of student-led sit-ins, pickets, boycotts, Freedom Rides, and protest marches flashed across the South and into the North. Some were spontaneous and some were the result of months of careful thought, discussion and planning.
In the years that followed, students-turned-organizers left campus to carry the Freedom Movement into Black communities across the South, dedicating their lives to combating segregation, fighting for voting rights, and organizing to win political power for the dispossessed and disenfranchised.
2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the ignition of the first mass student movement in U.S. history — a nationwide rising led and inspired by Black students from Black colleges — a movement that went on to help stop the War in Vietnam, win rights for women, farmworkers, and others, launch the environment movement, and so much more.
Here in the Bay Area we will be commemorating and celebrating that anniversary:
The heart of this event is telling our stories to each other, our families, and our friends. We urge Movement veterans to bring their families, children, and grandchildren so that we can share and pass on to those who come after us that which so powerfully shaped and affected our lives.
We ask you as a Movement veteran to prepare a 5-8 minute short story about something you did or experienced in the Freedom Movement, or someone you knew and admired. Your story can be from any time during the period 1951-1968. These stories will be taped, transcribed, and submitted for permanent posting in the "Our Stories" section of the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website (http://www.crmvet.org).
If you wish, you can email us a relevant photo that you would like to have projected on a screen behind you while you tell your story. Or, if you don't have a photo, you can choose one from the website's "Photo Album" (send photos or inquiries to bruceh@crmvet.org).
Program:
1:00-1:30 Meet, greet, and mingle
1:30-4:00 Veterans tell their stories
4:00-5:00 Celebration, socialize, cake, & toasts
For further information contact: Don Jelinek at: don@donjelinek.com.
Note that this is a free program open to the public. There is no admission charge, nor any donation requested.
Copyright © 2009
Last Modified: November 10, 2009.
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