Civil Rights Movement Archive
Annual Report for the Year 2020
As of January 1, 2021

 

2020 Milestones

In 2020 the Civil Rights Movement Archive (CRMA) incorporated itself as a California nonprofit. And by early 2021, we anticipate being granted 501c3 tax-exempt status by the IRS which will allow us to directly receive tax- exempt donations (we currently receive them through the good offices of the SNCC Legacy Project).

Going forward, our new nonprofit status will make it easier for us to establish a relationship with an institution that is able to assume stewardship over the CRMA when we are no longer able to continue maintaining and building it ourselves. Finding and implementing such an institutional relationship is a major goal for 2021.

We also upgraded our Speakers List which had become badly outdated. And we now have a part-time Speaker Coordinator who will focus on remote speaking engagements via Zoom. If you know of any schools, churches, civic groups, or community organizations that might be interested in hearing from one or more veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement — or including us in some program or event — please encourage them to check out the Speakers List.

A Wikipedia Article describing the CRMA is now on their website.

 

Website Traffic

According to Google there were 412,607 visits to our site in 2020 for an average of 1130 people per day. A "visit" is someone coming to the site and viewing one or more pages. If someone comes a second time, that's counted as a second visit. Roughly 86% of our visitors came from the U.S, with 14% from other nations.

Our 2020 traffic was 56% higher than the 260,000 visits we had in 2019. To what degree that increase was due to the pandemic and school closures — or in spite of them — we don't know. But we do know for sure that the mass Black Lives Matter protests of midyear drove an upsurge of interested in the Freedom Movement of the 1960s.

[Annual visits graph]
Annual
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
 Visitors
 332,559
 348,990
 419,716
 355,153
 445,951
 355,015
 300,931
 253,677
 263,244
 412,607

Aside from our increased traffic, 2020 was a very unusual year for us. As you can see from our previous annual reports, before this year our monthly traffic rose and fell with the school calendar as grade and college students used us for homework, reports, research, and so on. Our busiest months were usually January (MLK Day), February (Black History Month), and April & May (term papers due). Not so this year.

As you can see from the 2020 month-by-month graph below, our January-February traffic started off high as was normal. But after schools were closed by the Covid pandemic, our March and April traffic fell far below the same months in 2019. Then in May the massive Black Lives Matter protests erupted nationwide after the police murders of George Floyd and Breona Taylor and that spiked our numbers way up. The death of John Lewis, and then the fiercely fought 2020 election with its voter suppression and racist demagoguery, followed by the very real and immediate threats to our democracy that so many people across the nation courageously resisted, continued to spark increased interest in the Freedom Movement struggles of the 1960s, so our July through November numbers were significantly higher than the same period of 2019. Not until December of 2020, after the election, did our traffic numbers fall back to 2019 levels.

[Monthly visits graph]
    2019  2020 
Jan   
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
 24,878
32,386
29,579
33,614
33,637
11,767
9,454
9,694
15,468
20,880
22,938
16,667
 29,258
36,298
22,060
24,324
76,456
69,303
26,232
19,273
25,517
23,583
29,807
17,792

 

2020 Financial Report

Our Civil Rights Movement Archive receivies no grants from nonprofits or funding from philanthropists. Almost all of the donations we receive come from Freedom Movement veterans themselves in small amounts which we use to pay for web services, audio-transcriptions, technical enhancements, and data-entry help.

The financial summary below covers only our donation income and the expenses paid from those donations, it does not include our volunteer-labor or the out-of-pocket and in-kind expenses that we cover ourselves.


INCOME

  Donations 12,616.51
  Special Gift 5,000.00
Income Total: 17,616.51
   
EXPENSES

  Computer Equip/Repair/Software -2,377.23
  Corporate Fees & etc -575.00
  Data Entry -2,538.00
  Domain Registration -304.91
  EmailSvc -495.00
  Graphic/Web Design -150.00
  Misc -6.00
  Pins -48.83
  Software -4.99
  Transcriptions -288.75
  Travel -125.00
  Web-Hosting -586.86
Expense Total: -7,500.57
   
NET: 10,115.94

 

Website Content

A large amount of new content was added to the site in 2020. The number of stories, letters and documents significantly increased. We now provide well over 6000 searchable documents, letters, articles, & etc, (excluding photos and images).

Some Rough Content Counts:

671  Movement Veterans listed on Roll Call (names, testimony, contact info)
717  Stories, narratives, & oral histories by Movement activists
1849  Movement photos & art
4226  Original Freedom Movement documents
905  Original letters & reports from the field by Movement participants
469  Original articles & speeches by Movement activists
286  History & Timeline Articles
298  Commentaries by Movement participants
52  Transcribed discussions of Movement veterans
186  Movement-Related Poems
674   Freedom Movement books listed in the Bibliography
2792  Web Links, to other Movement websites & pages

Most Visited Website Sections:

SectionPageviews
1. Documents194,000
2. Articles & Speeches  129,000
3. History & Timeline81,000
4. Photo Album69,000
5. Poems68,000
6. Veterans Roll Call31,000
7. Our Stories30,000
8. Frequently Asked Questions30,000
9. Freedom Rides and Riders12,000
10. In Our Memories They Live Forever9,000

Most Viewed Original Freedom Movement Documents:

1. The Other America, Martin Luther King, 1967
2. An Appeal for Human Rights, Atlanta students, 1961
3. Bigger Than a Hamburger, Ella Baker, 1961
4. I'm Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired, Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964
5. Montgomery Bus Boycott Leaflet, 1955
6. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founding Statement, 1960
7. Civil Rights Act of 1966, 1966
8. School Desegregation Workshop Notes, Rosa Parks, 1955
9. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, Martin Luther King, 1967
10. Flyers From the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, 1965
11. The Basis of Black Power, SNCC Atlanta project, 1966
12. Economic Bill of Rights, Martin Luther King & SCLC, 1968
13. Speech to Anti-Vietnam War Protest, Martin Luther King, 1967
14. Letter From Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, 1963
15. Birmingham Manifesto, 1963
16. SNCC Position Paper: Women in the Movement, 1964
17. SNCC Statement on Vietnam, 1966
18. List of Documents, Oral Histories & Interview Archives, current
19. This Mother is Proud Her Daughter is in Jail, Justine O'Conner, 1961
20. Report on Project to Desegregate Sand Springs OK Public Schools, James Russell, 1964
21. MCHR Manual for Volunteers, 1966
22. Minutes, Montgomery NAACP, Rosa Parks, 1955
23. SNCC Report From Selma, Silas Norman & John Love, 1965
24. Civil Rights Act of 1964
25. I Don't Mind My Light Shining, Fannie Lou Hamer, 1963

Most Read Articles and Speeches:

1. Are You Qualified to Vote? (literacy tests)
  a. Voter Registration: How it Worked in Alabama
  b. Alabama Voter Literacy Test
  c. Alabama Voter Literacy Test: Parts "B" and "C"
  d. Alabama Voter Application Form
  e. Mississippi Voter Application & Literacy Test
  f. Louisiana Voter Application and Literacy Tests
  g. Voter Registration: How it Worked in Georgia
2. Original Draft of John Lewis' Speech to the March on Washington
3. Voting Rights History: Two Centuries of Struggle
4. The Power of Freedom Songs
5. We Charge Genocide: Crime of Government Against the Negro People
6. Nonviolent Training
7. Example Segregation Laws
8. Grenada Mississippi – Chronology of a Movement
9. Nonviolent Resistance as Practiced in the Civil Rights Movement
10. St. Augustine Movement Articles

Most Read History & Timeline Pages:

1. The Year 1960 — (Student Sit-ins, SNCC Founded, New Orleans Schools, etc)
2. The Year 1961 — (Freedom Rides, Albany Movement, McComb MS, Baton Rouge, etc)
3. 1963: January-June — (Birmingham, Greenwood, North Carolina, Medgar Evers, etc)
4 1963: July-December — (March on Washington, St. Augustine, etc)
5. 1965: Selma & the March to Montgomery
6. The Year 1954 — (Brown v Board of Education & Massive Resistance, etc)
7. The Year 1955 — (Montgomery Bus Boycott, Emmett Till, Baltimore Sit-Ins, etc)
8. 1964: Mississippi Freedom Summer Events
9. The Year 1962 — (Greenwood, Meredith at 'Ol Miss, Jackson, etc)
10. The Year 1951 — (Building Brown cases, Student Strike Moton High, Murder of the Moores)

Most Viewed Photo Album Pages:

1. The Sit-Ins — Off Campus and Into Movement
2. Posters
3. The Freedom Rides
4. They Say That Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
5. The Freedom Movement in Art
6. The Children's Crusade Birmingham — 1963
7. Mississippi Freedom Summer — 1964
8. Selma, Lord, Selma
9. Young People Lead the Way
10. The March to Montgomery

Most Read Commentaries by Movement Veterans:

1. Ghettos, Segregation, & Poverty in the 1960s, Bruce Hartford, 2015
2. The Big Spin, Bruce Hartford, 2020
3. Nonviolence, Self-Defense & Provocateurs, Bruce Hartford, 2020
4. Dear friend statement, Diane Nash, 2016
5. In the Attics of My Mind, Casey Hayden, 2010
6. Courage Was the Key, Bruce Hartford, 2014
7. A Black Man Fights the Draft, Michael Simmons, 2003
8. Selma: the Bridge and Beyond, Alma Jean Billingslea, 2018
9. Teaching the Movement, Miriam Cohen Glickman, 1967
10. John Dewey & Citizen Politics, Harry Boyte, 2017

Submitted January 1, 2021
Bruce Hartford, webspinner


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