CRMA
Civil Rights Movement Archive
Monthly Newsletter
May 1st, 2026
Table of Contents
Website Report
Our Sister Sites
Announcements
Top Ten Most Viewed
New CRMA Video & Audio
New Movement Documents
New Letters & Reports
New Stories & Narratives
New Articles & Speeches
New Thoughts & Commentaries
Activist Roll Call, New Names
In Memory, New Tributes
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), New Answers
New Poems
New Photos, Art, & Posters
Recent Books
Today is MayDay, 2026. Across the nation people of all races, genders, and
walks of life are protesting and resisting the MAGA regime's drive towards
authoritarian one-party rule.
Essential to MAGA's goal of returning us to the days of Jim Crow and
robber-baron economics is the Power
to Define the meaning of America. The Civil Rights Movement, and all the
social justice movements that it gave birth to, shifted our culture from the
norms of white-supremacy and privileges-of-power that had ruled us for
generations to shared goals of race, gender, religious, and social-equality as
aspirational values of American democracy. Now the MAGA regime is trying to
revert our nation back to White-Christian domination where all others are seen
and treated as having a 'place' that is lesser and subordinate.
The Freedom Movement and its sister struggles employed grassroots,
up-from-below, people-power to alter American perceptions and culture. And to
eventually influence government and institutions. Now the MAGA regime is
employing state-power to impose upon us their definition of who we are as a
people. Through myriad means of coercion, the MAGA regime forces compliance
with its definition of America. Books are banned from libraries and courses
altered at universities, displays and flags are taken down, and people are
hired or fired according to their alignment with MAGA political views. Laws
and programs created to oppose race-based inequality are now being redefinedn
and recharacterized as discrimination against white people; organizations and
institutions are being shut down and criminally indicted.
One example is the recent indictment of the
Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC) on specious charges of "fraud" by the Department of Justice.
Founded in 1971, for decades the SPLC investigated, called out, and filed
lawsuits against, white supremacist, hate, domestic terrorist, and
extreme-right demagogues and organizations such as the KKK and Proud Boys.
They worked closely with the Justice Department, other law enforcement
agencies, journalists, and researchers who trusted their reports. Now, under
new leadership appointed by the MAGA Regime, the DoJ is criminally indicting
them for doing what they were established to do.
The administrative foundation of the SPLC indictment is
National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) decreed by the White
House last fall. It instructs the DoJ and FBI to establish federal-state Joint
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) to: "conduct investigate, prosecute, and
disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and
intimidation." More than 200 of these JTTFs have already been formed
across the country. Included in their definitions of 'violence' are:
"anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; ... extremism on
migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional
American views on family, religion, and morality."
As the ACLU observed: "No wonder many in civil society see NSPM-7's
rhetoric as a threat to human rights, civil liberties, and democracy-building
work." And all indications are that a JTTF based in Montgomery AL played a
significant role in the SPLC indictment.
Nevertheless, this Civil Rights Movement Archive and our Sister Sites remain committed to freely-providing to all
an up-from-below 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 — to this day.
[Note: As this newsletter was being put together we heard that the
Republican-dominated Supreme Court gutted the last remaining provision of the
Voting Rights Act of
1965. They justified their ruling by echoing MAGA assertions that
protecting the rights of nonwhite Americans is discrimination against white
people. We will more fully address this matter in next month's newsletter.]
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.
Website Report
As of May 1st, our online archive contained 11,932 viewable pages, documents,
images, and recordings, 502 videos in our Vimeo video channel, and listings
for 697 Freedom Movement veterans.
According to Google, there were 42,164 visits to the CRMA website during April
for an average of 1405 per day. This is approximately 15% higher than April of
last year. Google reports that out on the global internet there are 17,895
backlinks to materials on our site by people, organizations, schools, and
colleges using us as a trusted information resource.
On school days, our number of visitors ranged from 800 to 1600 per day.
Roughly 29% of our visitors in April came from outside the U.S. On average
over the course of a year, international visitors used to comprise 15%-20% of
our users. But starting in August of last year, there was a sudden very large
increase in the number of visits from China that continued through last month.
This April though, the surge from China subsided, to be replaced by a
surprising increase in the number of visitors from Singapore and Vietnam that
together amounted to 16% of our total traffic. While we remain puzzled by
these up and down numbers from East Asia, we remain 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.
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:
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.
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.
Top Ten Most Viewed
According to Google, here are the 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
- Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
- Freedom Movement Photo Album
- C.R. Movement History 1950-1970
- Freedom Movement Bibliography
- Our Stories & Interviews
- Civil Rights Movement Major Topic Resources
- About the Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Documents: Selma Alabama and the March to Montgomery 1963-1965
- Civil Rights Movement Web Links
Individual Pages & Documents
- Photo Album: The Children's Crusade: Birmingham (1963)
- Photo Album: The Sit-Ins—Off Campus and Into Movement (1960)
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- C.R. Movement History: 1960 (student sit-ins)
- C.R. Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- Photo Album: The Freedom Rides (1961)
- Bigger Than a Hamburger, Ella Baker. Address: SNCC founding conference (1960)
- Poem: Ain't I A Woman? Sojourner Truth
- Poems of Langston Hughes
- Photo Album: Young People Lead the War (1960-1961)
Top Ten Sections & Pages That Others on the Internet Link To
The Top-Ten linked to pages are:
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- Are You "Qualified" to Vote?—Literacy Tests & Voter Applications
- The Plantation and the Oasis (Tougaloo College). Joan Traumpauer. 1961
- Manual For Southern Medical Projects MCHR. June 1964
- Public Opinion Polls on Civil Rights Movement activities, 1961-1969
- Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story Comic Book. (FOR)
- C.R. Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- C.R. Movement History: 1963 July-Dec (Mass Protests, March on Washington JFK assassination)
- Speech to Anti-War Protest, Dr. Martin Luther King. (April 15, 1967)
- Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, Dr. Martin Luther King. (April 4, 1967)
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 :
Mississippi: Setting the Stage, Wazir Peacock, SNCC. Presentation/Discussion San Francisco Freedom School. July 2010. 51min.
Annie Pearl Avery, SNCC. From the Freedom Rides to Bloody Sunday. 2014. 84 min.
Amelia Boynton-Robinson, DCVL. Recounting Bloody Sunday (Selma Al). 2005. 37 min.
Kathleen Bunton, ACMHR, Alabama Christian Movement For Human Rights. 1996. 34 min.
John Lewis, SNCC. From SNCC leader to US Congressman. 2005. 41 min.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, ACMHR/SCLC. The Beginning of the Birmingham Movement. Interviewed by Howell Raines about Birmingham, 1998. 39min.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, ACMHR/SCLC. Birmingham Movement Part-2. Interviewed by Howell Raines about Birmingham, 1998. 33min.
| 1954 | Letter to Thurgood Marshall, from Howard Epps, NAACP. Re segregation in Ashville NC city park. 7/21/54. 2 pages. |
| ???? | Social Change in the South Senior Honors Course. Willard Carpenter, college unidentified. Undated (probably 1960-1964) |
| ???? | Instructions to School Administrators in re Pamphlet Distributed. Ordering punishment of students who participate in some unidentified political activity. Sunflower County Mississippi Board of Education. Undated (probably between 1961-1964) |
| 1964 | Segregation, Harrassment, and Arrest for Negro Congressional Candidate. Re Rev. John Cameron, Hattiesburg MS. Undated (believed to be 1964). |
| 1964 | Workshop on Nonviolence, CORE. Monroe Louisiana. 3/28/64 |
| 1964 | Mississippi: How Negro Democrats Fared June 2, 1964 Democratic Primary election. MFDP. Part I. 12 pages. |
| 1964 | Note to Norma Becker re Houghton-Mifflin books for freedom schools. MS. Robert Gottlieb, H-M. 6/2/64 |
| 1964 | Letter to Donna Garde, UFT declining to make donation to freedom schools. M. Demming? Binny & Smith Inc. 6/5/64 |
| 1964 | Note to Raymond Davis, Rust Coll. re donation of thumb tacks. James Weinberg, American Tack Co. 6/9/64 |
| 1964 | Letter to Donna Garde, UFT declining to make donation to freedom schools. Walter Farley, J. Wiss & Sons. 6/11/64 |
| 1964 | Letter to Donna Garde, UFT declining to make donation to freedom schools. T.W. Barron, Permacel co. 6/12/64 |
| 1964 | Statement of Freedom Democratic Party on Sen. Douglas' Compromise Proposals, re seating of MFDP delegates at Democratic convention. 7/27/64 |
| 1964 | Mississippi Freedom Democrats and the 1964 Democratic Convention chronology-diary. MFDP. August 1964. 2 pages. |
| 1964 | Future CORE Program in Louisiana, Citizenship Program, Expansion & Special Projects, Budget. Unsigned CORE. 9/4/64. 4 pages. |
| 1964 | Events in Mississippi, November 1 and 2. MFDP. Aaron Henry for Governnor. 11/2/64. 3 pages. |
| 1964 | Memo: Conference on November 6th & 7th. Ronnie Moore, Lousiana CORE. 11/3/64. |
| 1964 | Agenda: Staff Meeting, Louisiana CORE. Ronnie Moore, Joyce Johnson, Judy Rollings. |
| 1964 | Schedule for Staff Training Program, Louisiana CORE. . 11/6/64. |
| 1965 | Minutes of 2nd State Planning Meeting, Young Democratic Clubs of Mississippi.Tougaloo College. R. Hunter Morey. June 4, 1965. |
| 1965 | Executive Committee meeting announcement, Cleve Sellers, SNCC. 8/23/65. |
| 1965 | Memo: Next Executive Committee Meeting, Unsigned SNCC. 9/19/65 |
| 1965 | Dear Ralph, unsigned note to Ralph (Featherstone?) re cancellation of SNCC September Executive Committee meeting. 9/19/65. |
| 1965 | Response to "defunct" excom members memo and difficulties attending ExCom meeting, Howard Zinn, SNCC. 9/30/65 |
| 1965 | Dear Howard, note to Howard Zinn urging him to attend October ExCom meeting. Muriel Tillinghast, SNCC. 10/5/65 |
Documents from the Northern Wing of the Movement
| 3/14/54 | NCADH | Address by Loren Miller to housing conference. Washington DC. 6 pages. |
| 6/28/54 | NAACP | Two letters regarding amusement park segregation in Allentown PA, NAACP. |
| 12/8/54 | CCHRP | CCHRP Membership Meeting notes. 2 pages. |
| 12/11/54 | NAACP | Two letters regarding city park segregation in Wilmington DE |
| 2/14/55 | NAACP | Four letters regarding city park segregation in Lansing MI from and to NAACP |
| 2/14/55 | NAACP | Memo re contesting will donating land to Detroit for a white-only city park, Thurgood Marshall, NAACP. |
| 5/24/55 | NAACP/LDF | Letter from Robert Carter, LDF to Webster Posey, Cincinatti OH. Re appeals process. |
| June-July, 55 | NAACP | Correspondence regarding skating rink segregation, and weak response by local NAACP. Muskegon, MI. 3 documents. |
| Fall, '55 | NAACP | Correspondence about racism, bigotry, skating rink, and NAACP (some handwritten), Edward Balstead, Beloit WI. Constance Baker Motley, NAACP. 5 document, 9 pages |
| 9/14/55 | NAACP | Correspondence regarding a Jim Crow (Black-only) playground, Alex Folder, Forrest City, AR. 2 documents. |
| 11/5/55 | NAACP | Two letters re skating rink segregation case Muskegon MI. |
| 11/15/55 | NAACP/LDF | Messages re relevance of Brown decision to segregation of recreational facilities. Robert Carter. LDF |
| 11/15/55 | NCADH | Letter to Mrs. Corienne R. Morrow re her case. |
| 12/55 | NCADH | Recent Developments in the Case of Mrs. Corienne R. Morrow. 3 pages. |
| 11/18/55 | AJC/ADL | Letter re Castle Hill Beach Club case in New York. Sol Rabkin & Theodore Leakes, AJC/ADL. 2 pages. |
The Power to Define, Courtland Cox, SLP
Mississippi: Setting the Stage, Wazir Peacock. 2010.
Quotations From the Long Road Toward Social Justice, Bruce Hartford
No new names added to the Roll Call this month
No new memories or tributes added this month
No new answers added this month.
No new poems added this month.
Freedom Summer
The Louisiana Movement
Recent Books by or About Movement Veterans:
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.
Police Against the Movement:
The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought
Back. Clark Davis. 2025. Princeton University Press. An examination of the
civil rights struggle through its work against police violence, malpractice,
and illegal surveillance such as the FBI's massive CONINTEL disruption and
political-repression program. Describes CORE, SNCC, and other organization's
direct action resistance to police abuses.
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.
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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