CRMA
Civil Rights Movement Archive
Monthly Newsletter
July 1st, 2026
Table of Contents
Attack on Voting Rights
Our Sister Sites
Announcements
Website Report
Top Ten Most Viewed
New CRMA Video & Audio
New Movement Documents
New Letters & Reports
New Stories & Narratives
New Articles & Speeches
New Thoughts & Commentaries
New Discussions
In Memory, New Tributes
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), New Answers
New Poems
New Photos, Art, & Posters
Recent Books
Understanding the Attack on Voting Rights
The two greatest achievements of the Freedom Movement of the 1950-1960s was
ending Jim Crow racial segregation and winning voting rights for nonwhite
Americans. Now those hard-won voting rights are under fierce and relentless
attack.
The 15th Amendment to our Constitution, adopted in 1870, clearly states:
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude."
But a minority of our population has never accepted that premise. Instead, for
150 years, generation after generation, they have continued to define America
as a white, Christian, native-born nation in which those who are not white, or
not Christian, or not native-born, or whose lives do not conform to their
narrow concept of Christianity, do not deserve to wield any
share of political power or to direct or influence the policies of government
because they are not "real Americans." Of course, they don't explicity
say that, but their actions make plain their intent. And therin
is rooted their false claims of voter-fraud, stolen elections, and "birther"
myths.
Today, at federal, state, and local levels those who reject all visions of
America as a pluralistic, multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural society, are
waging a relentless, partisan assault on the voting rights, political
influence, and very lives of those who do not fit their definition of "real
Americans."
Their assaults on voting rights take a variety of forms, strategies, and
tactics, all of which fall into three broad categories:
- Restricting and limiting who is eligible to vote and who can actually
become a registered voter based on racial and economic factors. For example,
targeted voter-ID laws, limiting vote-by-mail, illegally purging legitimate
voters from registration lists.
- Diluting and diminishing the political influence of nonwhite,
non-Christian, non-affluent, senior, and student communities at federal,
state, and local levels. For example, gerrymandering to prevent those
communities from electing representatives who understand and sympathize with
their interests.
- Criminally indicting, litigating against, and intimidating elected
officials, political organizations, and non-partisan election workers who do
not conform to their preferred policies and ideologies, refuse to carry out
illegal orders, or who dare to publicly dissent.
Many of us who put our bodies on the line to win voting rights half a century
ago are now, once again, standing up to defend our democracy and reclaim our
America by educating and advocating around voting issues, supporting the
efforts of voting rights groups who are defending democracy, and opposing
legislative and judicial assaults on democracy.
When Dr. King told us: "Nobody can do everything, but if everybody does
something, everything will get done," his key point was to do
something.
— Bruce Hartford
Please Donate.
With a Little Help From Our Friends,
We'll keep on keeping on.
Ever since we established the CRMA (originally known as "CRMVet") in 1999, it
has been almost entirely funded by personal donations from Freedom Movement
veterans and individual supporters. We carry on this work with almost zero
institutional support, foundation grants, or philanthropic contributions. So
if you find our CRMA site useful and worthy, please click
donate to keep us alive and growing.
You can donate via check, your bank's Bill Pay service, or
PayPal. Thank you for anything you are able to contribute.
Our Sister Sites
 |
SNCC Legacy Project (SLP). SLP preserves and extends SNCC's legacy.
Although SNCC the organization no longer exists, we believe that its legacy continues and needs to be brought forward in ways that continue the struggle for freedom, justice and equality today. |
 |
Movement History Initiative.
A collaborative effort by multiple organizations to build an integrated platform for preserving — and continuing to make freely available to the public — the history, thoughts, stories,
strategies, images, videos, and materials of up-from-below peoples' struggles for freedom, justice, and equality. It is being created by veterans of the 1960s Freedom Movement and modern-era, grassroots social-
justice activists in Black communities who share their lives-lived experiences from the inside-out to combat distortions, false-narratives and censorship. And to provide momentum for movement building
today. |
 |
SNCC Digital Gateway (SDG). A joint project of SLP and Duke University,
SDG tells the story of how young activists in SNCC united with local people in the South to build a grassroots movement for change that empowered the Black community and transformed the nation. |
 |
Black Power Chronicles. The SNCC Legacy Project created the Black Power Chronicles (BPC) in 2015
to help fill the informational void that exists in our historical record about the impact of the Black Power Movement in local communities throughout America. |
 |
SCOPE 50. Preserving Civil Rights and the Story of Voting. Website of SCLC/SCOPE project activists. |
 |
Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. Empowering the next generation, passing it on to carry it on
by preserving the history of the Mississippi Movement. |
 |
Teaching for Change and
Zinn Education Project.
Provides teachers and parents with the tools to create schools where students learn to read, write, and change the world by promoting and supporting the teaching of people's history in middle and high
school classrooms across the country. |
Announcements
From Protest to Power Podcasts . SNCC Legacy
Project (SLP). The central theme of these visual podcasts is the ongoing
effort of the Black community to achieve the power to define its existence in
America.
Now Available: SNCC: The New Abolitionists, new 3rd Edition with
new commentaries by Anthony Arnove and Barbara Ransby. Available from
Hayarket
Books.
Now Available: Another Sojourner Looking for Truth: My Journey from
Civil Rights to Black Power and Beyond, by Millicent Brown. South
Carolina, school desegregation, Black freedom struggle. University of South
Carolina Press. 2024. Memoir on the struggle for civil rights.
Movement Art: If you are aware of any works of art related to the
Freedom Movement such as paintings, drawings, murals, statues, and so on,
please take a look at our Civil
Rights Movement Art page to see if we already have an image of it in our
collection. If it isn't included in our collection please email us an image we
can post, or a weblink, or some other information that we can use. Thanks.
Movement Materials: Please continue to email to us documents, letters,
reports, stories, and other Southern Freedom Movement materials from the
period 1950-1970. See Submissions details.
Website Report
As of July 1st, our online archive contained 12,045 viewable pages, documents,
images, and recordings, 513 videos in our Vimeo video channel, and listings
for 697 Freedom Movement veterans.
According to Google, there were 178,564 visits to the CRMA website during June
for an average of 5852 per day. This is a whopping, huge, increase over June
of last year (17,000). And also compared to recent months. Last month (May),
for example, 58,000+ people visited the site, and in April 42,000+. But if
Google's statistics are accurate, this immense increase is due to a surge in
traffic from China. As we've been reporting for months, this baffles us.
Google reports that out on the global internet there are 30,973 backlinks to
materials on our site by people, organizations, schools, and colleges using us
as a trusted information resource.
On average over the course of a year, international visitors used to comprise
15%-20% of our users. But huge surges in traffic from Asia (particularly
China) are skewing those numbers in way we don't undersand. Regardles of
statistical mysteries, we are proud that our Freedom Movement of the 1960s is
still of interest to people around the world and that our site still stands as
a free, publicly-available, un-censored international information resource.
Top Ten Most Viewed
According to Google, here are the top-ten, most-visited sections and
individual pages in June.
(Note that Google does not count how often PDF files are accessed. Since most
of our documents are in PDF format, the "Top Ten" lists are not all that
accurate.)
Sections, Landing & Reference Pages
- Freedom Rides and Freedom Riders Resources
- Freedom Movement Photo Album
- Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
- Freedom Movement Bibliography
- MLK Speeched & Writings,
- Movement History 1950-1970
- Freedom Movement Videos
- Roll Call of Freedom Movement Veterans
- About the Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Our Stories & Interviews
Individual Pages & Documents
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- Photo Album: The Children's Crusade: Birmingham (1963)
- Documents From the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Poem: Ain't I A Woman? Sojourner Truth
- Photo Album: The Sit-Ins—Off Campus and Into Movement (1960)
- Movement History: 1960 (student sit-ins)
- Photo Album: The Freedom Rides (1961)
- Photo Album: The Sit-Ins—Off Campus and Into Movement (1960)
- Greensboro Sit-In, Khazan & McCain (1960)
Top Ten Sections & Pages That Others on the Internet Link To
- CRMA Home Page
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- Are You "Qualified" to Vote?—Literacy Tests & Voter Applications
- Public Opinion Polls on Civil Rights Movement activities, 1961-1969
- Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story Comic Book. (FOR)
- Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence , Dr. Martin Luther King. (April 4, 1967)
- Speech to Anti-War Protest, Dr. Martin Luther King. (April 15, 1967)
- Movement History: 1963 Jan-June (Birmingham, Greenwod, Danville)
- Final Plans for the March on Washington, 1963
Our CRMA Video
Channel on the Vimeo hosting service provides videos created by Freedom
Movement veterans (or their immediate families) and videos created by others
that are substantially about Movement veterans. When you visit the channel,
please consider adding yourself as a "follower" for social-media metrics.
Thanks.
New videos posted in June :
Joe Hendricks, NAACP & ACMHR. Birmingham, freedom rides, sit-ins. 1995.
Rev. Joseph Lewis Rogers, ACMHR. Birmingham early years, Shuttlesworth, Shady Grove Baptist church. 1998. 51 min.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Part 3: Birmingham, Albany GA, Wyatt T. Walker, leadership. 1998. 29 min.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Part 4: Birmingham strategies, Dr. King, contemporary issues, regrets. 1998. 30 min.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Part 5: Pastoring a church in Birmingham, violence, survival. 1998. 29 min.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Part 6: Conclusion and the importance of faith. 1998. 2 min.
| 1959 | Crusade for Citizenship Dinner announcement and planning for activities with Dr. King in September of '59. SCLC. Columbia SC. 8/22/59 |
| 1960 | March to Greenville That Democracy May Live flyer. Unsigned Greenville CORE and Ministerial Alliance. Protest airport segregation. 1/1/60 (note that date is a month before Greensboro NC sit-in). |
| 1964 | Citizenship Classes guide for classes. Unsigned CORE. Relationship to/with SCLC Citizenship Schools (if any) unclear. Undated (possibly 1964) |
| 1964 | Prospectus For the Summer, (later version). Unsigned COFO. Re Freedom Summer. Undated (probably Spring 1964) 5 pages. |
| 1964 | The Mississippi Legislature - 1964, Unsigned COFO. Compilation of anti-democratic, white supremacist, and unconstitutional laws passed by the state to oppose the Freedom Movement. June 2, 1964. 41 pages. |
| 1964 | Summary of Major Points in Testimony by Citizens of Mississippi. COFO. Panel report. 6/8/64. 5 pages. |
| 1964 | Mississippi Summer Project Fact Sheet, through August 1, 1964. COFO. 4 pages. |
| 1964 | Information Report by Project Area, summary data, Freedom Summer. Unsigned COFO. 9/28/64. 30 pages. |
| 1964 | A Report on Friends Visitation Among the Burned Churches of Mississippi, Ross Flanagan, AFSC. October 1964. 13 pages. |
| 1964 | Ministerial Mission to McComb Mississippi, J. Frederick McKirachan CORAR. October 19-29. 14 pages. |
| 1964 | The Congressional Challenge (MFDP Congressional Challenge). Unsigned CORAR? Mississippi. Undated (probably December 1964). 4 pages. |
| 1964 | In Support of the Fairness Resolution (Ryan resolution supporting the MFDP Congressional Challenge). Unsigned CORAR? Mississippi. 12/30/64. 2 pages. |
| 1964-65 | COFO Program (Winter 1964 - Spring 1965) |
| 1965 | Freedom Sunday Mass Meeting featuring Roy Wilkins, Memphis NAACP. May 16, 1965, 3 pages. |
| 1965 | Introduction of Roy Wilkins. G.W. Lee, Memphis NAACP. May 16, 1965, 3 pages. |
| 1966 | Memo to Central Committee re her work., Claudia Tillman, SNCC. 1/15/66. |
| 1966 | Free DC Movement, report to SNCC Central Committee. Marion Barry, SNCC. 3/14/66. 3 pages. |
| 1966 | Spot Light on Madiscon County (MS). Newsletter. Madison County Movement/COFO. Election report & current news. June 21, 1966. 6 pages. |
| 1967 | Staff Report to Central Committee, Evelyn Marshall, SNCC. 1/19/67. |
| 1968 | Justice and Jobs! Instructions for the March, flyer. Protest led by Dr. King during Memphis Sanitation Strike. Either for 3/22/68 march that was cancelled due to snow, or the 3/28/68 march that was violently distrupted by provocateurs |
| 1968 | Pay and expense request. NBC cameraman Bill McAfee, for coverage of Dr. King memorial march to Marks MS. May 1-7, 1968. |
| 1970 | Twenty Enemy Forces Within a Revolutionary Organization That Must Be Combatted. James Forman. Undated (possibly 1970) 14 pages. |
| 1969 | Report on NAACP/union protest. Memphis Police Dept. 10/24/69. |
| 1969 | Report on NAACP/union protest. Memphis Police Dept. 10/27/69. 3 pages. |
WATS & Phone Reports (Log of daily phone-in reports)
COFO July 9, 1964. Beatings and arrests of SNCC workers in Columbus MS. Sam Block, Willie Peacock, James Black, James Jones, Charles McLaurin.
COFO July 19-20, 1964. Multi-location digest. MS.
COFO July 21, 1964. Greenwood, Ashland & Hernano, arrests and trials.
COFO July 21, 1964. Beatings, arrests, mob violence, in many communities across the state of MS. 3 pages.
Documents from the Northern Wing of the Movement
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Documents
| 1/4/60 | Alice Spearman, SC | Dear Rev. Newman, South Carolina NAACP. Re upcoming activities in SC. 2 pages. |
| 1/4/60 | Alice Spearman, SC | Dear Rev. McClellen, letter re Jan 1, 1960 segregation protest as Greenville SC airport. |
| 2/5/64 | Joann Ooiman, CORE | Letter from Congressman Gale Shisler, Canton MS |
| 4/1/64 | JoAnne Ooiman, CORE | Note to Marilyn White regarding participation by students from Canton MS in SDS march probably anti-Vietnam War march in DC). |
| 4/7/64 | Unsigned COFO | Letter to Edwin Willis (HUAC), opposing HUAC political investigation of KKK. Canton, MS COFO |
| May 64 | JoAnne Ooiman, CORE | Letter to Frances Stuart Harmon about past and present. |
| 3/1/65 | JoAnn Ooiman, CORE | Evangelical United Bretheren Church News Letter, Canton MS |
| 3/22/65 | Janet Swing, CORE | Dear Ja, B & G, letter about movement support. Probably referring to CORE work in Canton MS |
Mandela Memorial Talk. Bill Hansen. 2013
William (Bill) Hansen
Clarence B. Jones
No new answers added this month.
No new poems added this month.
Young People Lead the Way
In the Circle of Trust
Freedom Movement Posters
Freedom Movement Art
Freedom Movement Art, Special Collections
Recent Books by or About Movement Veterans:
SNCC: The New
Abolitionists, New 3rd Edition with new commentaries by Anthony Arnove
and Barbara Ransby. Available from Hayarket Books.
Another Sojourner Looking
for Truth: My Journey from Civil Rights to Black Power and Beyond, by
Millicent Brown. South Carolina, school desegregation, Black freedom struggle.
University of South Carolina Press. 2024. Memoir on the struggle for civil
rights.
Civil Rights Warrior: A Life
on the Front Lines of Justice, Equality, and the American Dream, by
Evelyn (Evie) Jones Rich. Skyhorse. 2026. Autobiography of CORE activist and
leader.
As always comments, suggestions, corrections, and submissions from Freedom
Movement activists are welcome. Veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement who
are listed on the website's Roll Call are encouraged to contribute to the
website their stories, thoughts, documents, and memories & tributes of those
who have passed on by emailing them in to us.
If you're not already a subscriber to the monthly email version of this
newsletter, send us your email address and let us know you'd like to be added
to the list. To unsubscribe (heaven forfend!) do the same.
— Bruce Hartford
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