CRMA
Civil Rights Movement Archive
Monthly Newsletter
April 1st, 2025
Last week, the Trump administration continued their relentless campaign to
whitewash and distort American history by issuing an
Executive Order
to politically censor federal museums, monuments, memorials, and parks; and
restore the Confederate monuments and memorials that were removed during the
Biden administration. He particularly singled out the National Museum of
African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) — sometimes
colloquially referred to as the "Blacksonian" — for the
personal attention of V.P. Vance who sits on the Smithsonian Board of Regents.
"Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the
past control the future" — George Orwell, 1984.
Trump/Musk clearly intend to disappear any voice that challenges their MAGA
dogma. And they are swiftly moving against anyone in a federal leadership
position who dares dissent, replacing them with sycophant-hires and
sycophant-appointees. As N.Y. Times columnist Jamelle Bouie put it back
in February: "Trump's war on DEI is a war on the Civil Rights Era itself,
an attempt to turn back the clock on equal rights ... to restore a world where
the first and most important qualification for any job of note was whether you
were white and male, where merit is a product of your identity and not of your
ability."
We veterans of the Civil Rights Movement hold living memories of McCarthyism,
blacklists, mob violence, thought police, loyalty oaths, political
deportations, and passport seizures. We also remember political-firings in
government, academia, and private enterprise. So we know how essential it is
that we, ourselves, preserve and make available our own history and views. The
Civil Rights Movement Archive and our Sister
Sites 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 movements that shaped not only our lives but American
history and culture.
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 36,263 visits to the CRMA website during March
for an average of 1170 per day. This is approximately 25% higher than March of
last year.
Roughly 16% of our visitors came from outside the U.S. in March. 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.
Over the long term however, ever since 2020 our U.S. traffic has been slowly
declining. Since two-thirds of our visitors are students (grade school and
college) we believe that a significant portion of this decline stems from the
unrelenting attacks being waged by Republicans and MAGAites against teachers,
librarians, school boards, and universities who dare stand against systemic
racism and educate around issues of racial injustice. Nevertheless, we will
persevere.
As of April 1st, our online archive contains 10,905 viewable pages, documents,
images, and recordings, plus 448 videos in our Vimeo video channel.
Top Ten Most Viewed
According to Google, our top-ten, most-visited sections and individual
pages in March.
(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
- Are You "Qualified" to Vote?—Literacy Tests & Voter Applications
- Freedom Rides and Freedom Riders Resources
- Site Search: Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Documents From the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Original Freedom Movement Documents
- Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
- Freedom Movement Bibliography
- Documents From the 1960s Sit-Ins
- Civil Rights Movement History 1950-1970
- Documents From the March on Washington
Individual Pages & Documents
- Photo Album: The Children's Crusade: Birmingham (1963)
- Poems of Langston Hughes
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1960 (student sit-ins)
- Photo Album: The Sit-Ins—Off Campus and Into Movement (1960)
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- Photo Album: The Freedom Rides (1961)
- Poem: Ain't I A Woman? Sojourner Truth
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1963 Jan-June (Birmingham, Greenwod, Danville)
- Documents From the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Top Ten Sections & Pages That Others on the Internet Link To
Google reports that out on the global internet there are 24,316 backlinks to
materials on our site by schools, organizations, and people using us as a
trusted information resource.
- Freedom Movement Bibliography
- About the Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Civil Rights Movement Web Links
- Roll Call of Freedom Movement Veterans
- Are You "Qualified" to Vote?—Literacy Tests & Voter Applications
- Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
- Civil Rights Movement History 1950-1970
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Our Stories & Interviews
- In Our Memories They Live Forever
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 March:
SNCC 28th ~ "Oh Freedom": The Music of the Movement, Bernice Reagon 71min.
SNCC 28th ~ The SNCC Woman and the Stirrings of Feminism, Mary King, Casey Hayden, Jean Wheeler Smith, Joyce Ladner. 110min.
SNCC 28th ~ Alabama Bound: Selma and the Lowndes County Black Panther Party 1964-1966, Martha Norman, Robert Mants, Johnny Jackson. 134min.
SNCC 28th ~ Discussions with SNCC Veterans and Students, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu & Bill Hansen. 78min.
SNCC 28th ~ The Rise and Triumph of Black Power 1965-1966,, Michael Thelwell, Cleveland Sellers, Gloria House, Courtland Cox, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael). 256min.
SNCC 28th ~ SNCC the 1960s and the American Democratic Tradition, Clayborne Carson, Allen Matusow, Michael Thelwell, Jack Chatfield. 115min.
James Forman, Eyes on the Prize interview. SNCC, SCLC, March on Washington, Dr. King. 1985. 49 min.
Ernest Green, Eyes on the Prize interview. Little Rock AR and Little Rock Nine. 1979. 48 min.
William Anderson, Eyes on the Prize interview. Albany GA movement, SCLC, Dr. King. 1985. 41 min.
Acts of Courage.
Maria Gitin (SCLC-SCOPE-SNCC 1965) and Marcia Hashimoto of the
Watsonville Japanese American Citizens League discuss the inspiration
they drew from the courage of civil rights activists. KSQD radio, 2025.
28min.
| 51-52 | Assassination of Harry and Harriet Moore (Multiple Documents) |
| 12/27/51 | Action Letter to NAACP branch officers notifying them of Moore assassination, Walter White, Exec. Dir. 3 documents. |
| 12/??/51 | In Memory of Harry T. Moore, call to action. Gloster Current, NAACP. Undated, December 1951. |
| 1/52? | Moore assasination organizing material for use by NAACP branches. Unsigned. Undated (either December 1951 or January 1952) 4 documents. |
| 1/52? | NAACP mailing labels, excerpt of branch officer mailing list. |
| 1/ /52 | Mims Florida, press release re Moore murder. Walter White, NAACP ExecDir. 3 pages. |
| 1/6/52 | Memorial service for Harry Moore, Ollivet Baptist Church, Harlem NY. NAACP notices and flyers. 7 documents. |
| 1/16/52 | Letter to NAACP Youth Concil leaders re the Moore murders, Herbert Wright, NAACP. |
| 1/17/52 | Action Letter: Follow Up Activity on Harry T. Moore Case, to branch leaders. Gloster Current, NAACP. |
| 1/18/52 | Letter to NAACP Youth Concil leaders re death of Harriet Moore. Herbert Wright, NAACP. 2 documents. |
| 1/20/52 | NAACP southern branches meeting, Jacksonville FL. Ruby Hurly, Walter White, NAACP. 3 documents. |
| 1/20/52 | Draft: Declaration at Jacksonville, NAACP. |
| 1/25/52 | Dear Member, appeal re Moore murders. Lucille Black, NAACP. |
| 1962 | Suggested List of Resources for the Mississippi movement. Unsigned, possibly SNCC. Undated (possibly 1962) |
| 1964 | Freedom Riders appeals to Supreme Court of Mississippi,
NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund (LDF). Appeal of 1961
convictions, facts of case, rulings, etc. 1963-1964. 143 pages. |
| 1961 | Report on African Attitudes Towards the American Negro and the American Negro Attitudes Towards Africa, unsigned. Adapted from AMSAC special meeting of May 27, 1961. 6 pages. |
| 1964 | Emergency appeal re Hattiesburg, unsigned COFO. 4/8/64. |
| 1964 | Fund appeal letter, for NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Alan Knight Chalmers, Committee of 100. 12/8/64. |
| 1964 | Rough minutes of NCC to discuss Mississippi project National Council of Churches, 9/18/64. |
| 1965 | Memo re Washington Post, LBJ, and poverty, Jack Minnis, SNCC. 10/28/65. |
| 1988 | Program: "We Shall Not Be Moved," The Life and Times of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1960-1966. |
Application Forms & Personnel Files
WATS & Phone Reports (Log of daily phone-in reports)
SNCC, March 16, 1964. Segregated Holiday on Ice show in Jackson MS , C.B. King campaign in Albany GA.
SNCC, March 16, 1964. Police killing of Black teenager in Albany GA.
SNCC, March 21, 1964. Marshall Co, Sardis Lake, Jackson, Greenwood MS.
SNCC, March 22, 1964. Chapel Hill NC sit-in cases, trials and police harrassment in Arkansas.
SNCC, March 23, 1964. Protests at Alcorn A&M in MS, Ruleville MS and Pine Bluff AR reports.
SNCC, March 24, 1964. Chapel Hill conviction & 1 year sentence, Hattiesburg voter-registration arrest.
SNCC, March 27, 1964. Mass protests and arrests in Nashville TN, arrest in Selma AL, crosses burned in MS counties.
SNCC, March 28, 1964. Mass protests in Nashsville TN and violent police attack 18 hospitalized.
Vietnam War, Military Draft, & GI Movement Documents
Documents from the Northern Wing of the Movement
Affidavits of Repression, Retaliation & Violence
It's Dark, But It's Not Midnight SNCC Legacy Project (SLP)
Quantifying White and Jewish CRM Participation and Support (expanded), Bruce Hartford
New Tributes & Memories added to In Memory
No new memories or tributes added this month
No new answers added this month.
New Additions to Poetry
No new poems added this month.
New Additions to the Photo Album Pages:
Freedom Movement Art
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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