CRMA
Civil Rights Movement Archive
Monthly Newsletter
May 1st, 2025
Table of Contents
In 1905, the Spanish philosopher George Santayana noted that, "Those who
cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And in his prescient
dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell later wrote, "Those who control
the present, control the past and those who control the past control the
future." And that, of course, is what the Make America Great Again (MAGA)
regime is trying to do. Their end-goal is to restore and enforce the explicit
and legally-sanctioned racial hierarchies of the past.
To that end, last month they continued issuing decress, executive orders,
regulations, and policies, aimed at suppressing Diversity, Equity and
Inclusion (DEI) programs and combating what they see as, "woke
ideology." By which they mean preserving, studying and teaching America's
history of racism and of our peoples' struggles for freedom and
equality — such as the Civil Rights Movement. One recent
example of their assault on our history was last month's sudden revocation of
an NEH grant to the
SNCC & Grassroots Organizing Discussion Series without explanation or
notice.
Back in the day,
Citizenship Schools
leader Septima Clark declared that, "Education should not serve to
perpetuate inequality, but rather to dismantle it."
That is the principle that motivates this Civil Rights Movement Archive and
our Sister organizations
as — despite MAGA and all that they stand
for — we remain committed to freely-providing to all an
up-from-below, inside-out, and lives-lived, perspective on the
Civil Rights, Black Power, and other freedom and social-justice movements that
shaped not only our lives but American history and culture to this day.
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. |
 |
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. |
 |
Movement History Initiative, John Hope Franklin Center, Duke University. |
 |
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
SNCC & Grassroots Organizing
Discussion Series. Spring, 2025. SNCC veterans and humanities scholars
explore SNCC's organizing work and its connections to life, community, social-
justice struggles today. In-Person and Live-Streamed.
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.
Save A Civil Rights Landmark! In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson was
told that if he wanted to keep an eye on the leaders of the Civil Rights
Movement, he should just look at the St. Johns County Jail in St. Augustine,
Florida — because that's where they were all incarcerated.
Now the Sheriff proposes to
tear down
that civil rights landmark. Will you add your voices, as veterans of the
movement, to those who do not want to lose this important building? Five
County Commissioners will have the final vote on its fate. Please write and
let them know that the world is watching!
bcc1whitehurst@sjcfl.us
bcc2sarnold@sjcfl.us
bcc3cmurphy@sjcfl.us
bcc5ataylor@sjcfl.us
bcc4kjoseph@sjcfl.us
If Anybody Should Ask
You ... This Is What Happened: A Memoir, by Gwendolyn J. Dennis-Mack.
2024. The personal story of an African American high school girl who joined
the movement of young people to desegregate American classrooms in Deep South
Georgia.
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
According to Google, there were 36,511 visits to the CRMA website during April
for an average of 1217 per day. This is approximately 10% higher than April of
last year.
On school days, our number of visitors ranged from 2200 to 1200 per
day.
Roughly 13% of our visitors came from outside the U.S. in April. On average
over the course of a year, international users make up 15%-20% of our users.
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.
As of May 1st, our online archive contains 11,906 viewable pages, documents,
images, and recordings, plus 468 videos in our Vimeo video channel.
Top Ten Most Viewed
According to Google, our top-ten, most-visited sections and individual
pages in April .
(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
- Are You "Qualified" to Vote?—Literacy Tests & Voter Applications
- Site Search: Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Original Freedom Movement Documents
- Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
- Documents From the 1960s Sit-Ins
- Civil Rights Movement Major Topic Resources
- Civil Rights Movement History 1950-1970
- Documents: Selma Alabama and the March to Montgomery 1963-1965
- Freedom Movement Photo Album
Individual Pages & Documents
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- Photo Album: The Children's Crusade: Birmingham (1963)
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1960 (student sit-ins)
- Photo Album: We're Going to March in St. Augustine (1963-1964)
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- Photo Album: The Freedom Rides (1961)
- Documents From the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Louisiana Voter Application and Literacy Tests
- Photo Album: The Sit-Ins—Off Campus and Into Movement (1960)
- Poems of Langston Hughes
Top Ten Sections & Pages That Others on the Internet Link To
Google reports that out on the global internet there are 21,286 backlinks to
materials on our site by people, organizations, grade-schools, and
universities using us as a trusted information resource. The Top-Ten linked to
pages are:
- The Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR)
- 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, Roper Center archive
- Freedom Rides and Freedom Riders Resources
- Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story Comic Book. (Fellowship of Reconciliation)
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1963 Jan-June (Birmingham, Greenwod, Danville)
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1960 (student sit-ins)
- I'm Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired, Fannie Lou Hamer
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 April:
It's Dark, But It's Not Midnight. Video editorial by the SNCC Legacy Project (SLP) on the current political situation and the historic role of the Black community in America. April 2025.
2 minute version 4 minute version
Gaye Adegbalola: Civil Rights and the Blues, by University of Mary Washington, 2017. Fredericksburg, VA. 1960 lunch counter sit-ins. 82min.
Richmond 34 Collection
Sit-In STAND OUT documentary film by Richmond Performing Arts Alliance (RPAA), 2011. 16 min.
Elizabeth Johnson Rice , by RPAA, 5 min.
Ford T. Johnson, Jr., by RPAA. 39 min.
Dr. Allix B. James, by RPAA. 42 min.
Barbara Thornton Nero, by RPAA. 31 min.
Dr. Leroy M. Bray, Jr., by RPAA. 31 min.
Tobias Randolph, by RPAA. 31 min.
Raymond B. Randolph, Jr., by RPAA. 45 min.
A.J. Franklin, by RPAA. 38 min.
Woody Grant, by RPAA. 5 min.
| 1961? | Voter registration proposal to Taconic Foundation, Wyatt T. Walker, SCLC. Undated (possibly 1961). 14 pages. |
| 1961 | Voter registration proposal and budget to Taconic Foundation. James Farmer, CORE. 8/17/61. 3 pages. |
| 1961 | Memorandum on voter registration campaign, unsigned SRC. 8/23/61. 7 pages. |
| 1963? | Please Do Not Patronize the Campus Grill Until It Serves All Students Regardless of Race, Creed or Color. Ron Parker, Nashville TN. Undated, possibly 1963 |
| 1964 | Memorandum on Structure and Activities of NAACP in Voter Registration. Unsigned (possibly LDF). Undated (possibly 1964). |
| 1964 | List of racist laws & resolutions Mississippi legislature, Jan-March, 1964. Unsigned. 3 pages. |
| 1966 | Jackson MS voter registration effort, YWCA/NAACP students, April spring break. 11 documents. |
| 1964 | Instructions for Holding a Precinct and Conunty Convention, MFDP. Preparation for challenging the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Atlantic City convention. Undated, mid-1964. |
| 1964 | Recruitment Techniques, unsigned Greenwood MS. SNCC? COFO? MFDP? Undated. |
| 1966 | The Selection of Candidates to Run For Congress Against James O. Eastland. Victoria Gray, Bill Ware, Andrew Green, MFDP. Undated (probably August 1966). |
| 1966 | MFDP campaign flyer, 1966 Mississippi election. November 8. |
| 1966 | MFDP campaign flyer, 1966 Mississippi election. November 8. |
| 1966 | Dear Community Leader or Organizer, memo from Freedom Information Service (FIS). 8/16/66. 3 pages. |
| Mississippi Freedom Summer Documents |
| 1964 | Mississppi Freedom Summer (flyer for Black communities), Unsigned, COFO. Undated 1964 |
| June? | The Mississippi Power Structure. Unsigned COFO or SNCC. 10 pages. |
| June? | Voter Registration Laws in Mississippi, Subversion of the Fifteenth Amendment in Mississippi. Unsigned COFO or SNCC. 9 pages. |
| June? | Mississippi Politics and COFO's Political Program. Unsigned COFO or SNCC. 16 pages. |
| June? | From New Negro Poets: USA. Unsigned COFO or SNCC. 4 pages. |
| June? | Harriet Tubman 1823-1913. Unsigned COFO or SNCC. 2 pages. |
| June? | Fredrick Douglas 1817-1895. Unsigned COFO or SNCC. 2 pages. |
| July | Freedom News, Holly Springs Freedom School, MS. July 10, July 17 |
| 1964 | Letters From Mississippi letter lists & releases, by Betita Martinez (Elizabeth Sutherland). |
Freedom Movement Publications
Southern Patriot March, 1955: Anne Braden trial, Jim Crow parks banned, CORE desegregates Baltimore lunch counters.
Southern Patriot April, 1955: Supreme Court desegregation cases, Montgomery Alabama Claudette Colvin bus segregation case.
Southern Patriot May, 1955: Southwest rally on integration, Phoenix AZ school integration, West Virginia HBCU integrates.
Southern Patriot June, 1955: New Orleans social workers statement in favor of school integration, Houston conference school integration formulas.
Southern Patriot September, 1955: Sen. Eastland, American Legion, and others attack SCEF as 'subversive' organization
Southern Patriot October, 1955: New Oleans school integration petition, Red scare smears against SCEF, Mississippi significance of Emmett Till murder.
Southern Patriot November, 1955: Georgia Attorney-General attacks SCEF, NAACP, and SRC, Dalton GA red-scare union busting,
Southern Patriot December, 1955: Anti-integration red-scare in New Orleans, School integration in St. Louis, Montgomery Bus Boycott begins.
WATS & Phone Reports (Log of daily phone-in reports)
SNCC, May 1, 1964. Hattiesburg MS Pete Stoner appeal, McComb MS Zellner arrest
SNCC, May 1, 1964. Nashville TN protests, SNCC organizing there, injunction & violence.
SNCC, May 5, 1964. Meridian MS arrests, Nashville TN protests marches and white support.
SNCC, May 6, 1964. Report on Jackson MS harrassment and arrest of SNCC/COFO activists at train station.
SNCC, May 6, 1964. Meridian MS legal cases, Natchez & Canton MS bomb threats, Jackson MS legislation against Freedom Summer, Greenwood MS legal case.
SNCC, May 7, 1964. Larry Rubin & Alvin Packer arrested at Holly Springs MS roadblock while delivering books for freedom school.
SNCC, May 9, 1964. Chapel Hill NC arrests, injunction, legal cases and voter registration.<
SNCC, May 9, 1964. Red smear article against SNCC in Cincinatti Enquirer and Justice Department's reply.
Vietnam War, Military Draft, & GI Movement Documents
Documents from the Northern Wing of the Movement
| 1962 | Faith Holsaert, SNCC | Dear Betsy & Paul, Albany and Terrell County Georgia. |
| 12/62? | Faith Holsaert, SNCC | Dear Ciff, letter to her sister re Albany & SW Georgia. |
| 12/62 | Faith Holsaert, SNCC | Dear Ciff, note to her sister re Albany & SW Georgia. |
| 12/30/62 | Daddy Holsaert | Dearest Faith, letter to Faith Holsaert from her father. |
| 1963 | Leko | Dear Faith, personal note to Faith Holsaert |
| 1/13/63 | Anne Braden, SCEF | Letter to Faith Holsaert re legal cases & etc, Southwest Georgia. |
| 2/12/64 | Jack ???? | Note to Anne and Carl Braden of SCEF re communication strategy for MS, |
| 8/65 | Judy Richardson, SNCC | Residential Freedom School Report. 12 pages. |
| 8/29/66 | Jan Hillegas, FIS | Letter to Bruce Hartford, re ASCS query. MS |
New Letters & Reports From Freedom Summer
| 7/8 | Appeal letter, Marylin Rapley. To faculty member. No location |
| 7/11 | Mississippi, Marilyn Rapley, report from Laurel MS. |
| ??? | Dear Mother, John Stevenson. Re MFDP. Undated. No location. |
| ??? | Letter about mood & emotion, Heather Tobis Booth. Undated. Shaw, Sunflower Co. |
| ??? | Dear Friends, George Robbins. Poverty, violence & the Movement in Shaw MS. Undated. 6 pages. |
| 6/9 | SV Girl Reports From Mississippi, Gretchen Schwarz, (Sunnyvale Standard) Report from Ruleville on Freedom School. |
| 8/5 | Dear Mom, Gretchen Schwarz, Report from Ruleville on MFDP. |
| 9/11 | Report (pages missing), Gretchen Schwarz. |
| Bob Mants | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re SNCC, Lowndes Co. AL, voter registration, Stokely Carmichael. 1988. 21 pages |
| Rudolph Lee | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Montgomery Bus Boycott, Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, mass meetings. 1979. 9 pages |
| Linda Brown Smith | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Brown v. Board of Education, Little Rock school integration. 1985. 10 pages |
| Darrell Evers | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Medgar Evers. 1986. 7 pages |
| A.G. Gaston | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Birmingham, AL protests, AG Gaston Motel, children in marches, Bull Connor, Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King Jr. 1985. 9 pages |
| Patricia Harris | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re youth movement, protest marches, freedom songs. 1979. 7 pages |
| Georgia Gilmore | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Montgomery Bus Boycott. 1979. 4 pages |
| Georgia Gilmore | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks. 1985. 11 pages |
| Joseph Ellwanger | Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Birmingham, AL, Selma to Montgomery Rights March. 1998. 13 pages |
Affidavits of Repression, Retaliation & Violence
No new articles added this month
No new history articles added this month.
No new history commentaries month.
No new names added to the Roll Call this month
No new memories or tributes added this month
No new answers added this month.
J. Shetterly: Mississippi Love Song
In the Circle of Trust
Freedom Movement Posters
Recent Books By or About Movement Veterans:
Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement.
Atria/One Signal Publishers (Simon & Schuster) March 2025. The little known
story of how four activists in the 1950s created and built a semi-clandestine
network of Citizenship Schools across the Jim Crow South. A network that
formed a foundation for the Freedom Movement's voting rights battles of the
1960s. Septima Clark, Esau Jenkins, Bernice Robinson, and Myles Horton of the
Highlander Center.
Mississippi's Black Cotton.
By MacArthur Cotton and John Obee, foreword by Nikole Hannah-Jones. University
of Georgia Press. May 1, 2025. A personal history of the 1960's Mississippi
Civil Rights Movement by SNCC Field Secretary MacArthur Cotton, who lived it.
If Anybody Should Ask
You ... This Is What Happened: A Memoir, by Gwendolyn J. Dennis-Mack.
2024. The personal story of an African American high school girl who joined
the movement of young people to desegregate American classrooms in Deep South
Georgia.
More Voices
of Civil Rights Lawyers: Continuing the Struggle, by Kent Spriggs.
Stories and descriptions by 23 Civil Rights Lawyers about their struggles to
advance and maintain human rights in the United States South.
Putting
the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching, Second Edition. By
Menkart, Murray, and View. 2024. Lessons, quizzes, images, essays, articles,
primary source documents, and poetry, to help teachers go beyond a "heroes and
holidays" approach to teaching about the Freedom Movement in K-12 classrooms.
The focus is on people of color, women, youth, organizing, culture,
institutional racism, and the interconnectedness of social
movements — Desegregation of Public Spaces, Voting Rights,
Black Power, Labor and Land, Transnational Solidarity, and Student
Engagement.
Unlawfully Incarcerated At Age Thirteen, by Emmarene Kaigler Streeter,
2024. Personal story of one the "Stolen Girls of the
Lee County Stockade
arrested in Americus GA, and imprisoned in 1963.
Marching in Montgomery, by John J. Hartman. IPBooks. 2024.
First-hand account by a participant of the March 1965 voting rights protests
in Montgomery Alabama in support of the movement in Selma AL.
Ma Lineal: A Memoir of Race, Activism, and Queer Family, by Faith
Holsaert. Memoir of NYC childhood, SNCC in Southwest Georgia, and raising her
own children in the coalfields of West Virginia.
The Rise and Fall of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, by
Martin Oppenheimer. Native Publishers, 2024. Concise history including the
historical antecedents, the Greensboro sit-ins, Freedom Summer, the violence
of KKK and police, and its demise around 1973.
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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