As you can see from the graph in our 2024 Annual Report, the number of visitors to our website declined 44% from a high of 450,000 visitors in the year before Trump was elected president to 250,000 during his term.
We estimate that two-thirds of our visitors are students in grade school and college. We assume they use us to complete class assignments, projects, and papers. In the face of the unrelenting attacks against 'wokism,' DEI, and any teaching about race and racism that began during the 2016 election campaign and intensified thereafter, it's no surprise that some school boards, teachers, administrators, and professors, succumbed to intimidation and stepped back from teaching the Freedom Movement.
In 2020, our traffic spiked back up during the George Floyd protests and the presidential campaign. But in the years that followed, MAGAites continued their attacks and intimidation unrestrained and unabated. So during the Biden administration, our number of visitors again declined until leveling out in 2023 and 2024 at around 60% of what it had been in 2015.
These first days of the new regime make clear that they intend to use the full power of the federal government to eliminate 'wokism' from schools and colleges. Compared to the squalls that we have endured up to now, it looks like the coming storm is going to be a hurricane. So we expect that when threatened with budget cuts and public intimidation, too many educators will cut back on — or even eliminate entirely — teaching about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950-1960s, which will significantly reduce how many students use us.
Yet we also know, that as Tolstoy once observed, "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time." So our response will be to continue preserving and protecting primary-source materials and lives-lived memories of the Freedom Movement and maintaining this CRMA website as a free, open, un-censored, tell it like it was source of information.
Fortunately, we are self-governed and self-reliant. We are almost entirely self-funded by small donations from Freedom Movement veterans and supporters. We have no advertisers, and are therefore immune to sponsor-threats. Nor do we receive any money at all from any government agencies or corporate-funded foundations. So while the number of our visitors may well go down, "Like a tree beside the water, we shall not be moved."
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.
SNCC & Grassroots Organizing Discussion Series. January-March, 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.
SCOPE 60th Anniversary Reunion. March 6-9, 2025. Montgomery & Selma AL. Lodging in Montgomery. Day trip to Selma. Montgomery sites: Rosa Parks Museum, Freedom Riders Museum, First Baptist Church, SPLC Civil Rights Memorial; Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, National Memorial for Peace and Justice (the Lynching Memorial) and Legacy Museum.
Coming Soon! Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement. Available March 2025, pre-order now. 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.
Pre-Order Now. Mississippi's Black Cotton. By MacArthur Cotton and John Obee, foreword by Nikole Hannah-Jones. University of Georgia Press. May 1, 2025 (pre-order now). A personal history of the 1960's Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by SNCC Field Secretary MacArthur Cotton, who lived it.
Now Available: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
According to Google, there were 31,448 visits to the CRMA website during January for an average of 1048 per day (with a peak of 1800 on Martin Luther King Day). On school days, our number of visitors ranged from 900 to 1200 per day.
Roughly 13% of our visitors came from outside the U.S. On average, international users make close to a fifth 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 February 1st, our online archive contains 10,569 viewable pages, documents, images, and recordings, plus 428 videos in our Vimeo video channel.
Google reports that out on the global internet there are 21,818 backlinks to materials on our site by people, organizations, and schools using us as an information resource.
According to Google, our top-ten, most-visited sections and individual pages in January were:
Sections, Landing & Reference Pages
- Documents From the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
- Site Search: Civil Rights Movement Archive
- MLK Speeched & Writings,
- Freedom Rides and Freedom Riders Resources
- Civil Rights Movement Web Links
- Original Freedom Movement Documents
- Freedom Movement Bibliography
- Documents From the 1960s Sit-Ins
- Freedom Movement Videos
Individual Pages & Documents
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- Speech to Anti-War Protest, Dr. Martin Luther King. (April 15, 1967)
- Alabama Voter Literacy Test
- Poems of Langston Hughes
- Photo Album: The Sit-Ins—Off Campus and Into Movement (1960)
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1960 (student sit-ins)
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
- Photo Album: The Children's Crusade: Birmingham (1963)
- Photo Album: Freedom Movement Posters
- Louisiana Voter Application and Literacy Tests
(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.)
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 January:
Marion Barry, interviewed by Blackside. SNCC, Nashville, TN. 1979. 31 min.
James Farmer, interviewed by Blackside. CORE, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, nonviolence, 1985. 59min.
Michael Harrington, interviewed by Blackside. Poor People's Campaign, Martin Luther King. 1988. 22 min.
Coretta Scott King, interviewed by Blackside. Martin Luther King, Poor People's campaign, SCLC, Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike. 1985. 92 min.
Leo Lillard (Kwame Lillard), interviewed by Blackside. Nashville, TN sit-ins, Freedom Riders, Birmingham. 1985. 27 min.
Joseph Rauh, interviewed by Blackside. MFDP legal, NAACP. 1985. 40 min.
Taylor Rogers, interviewed by Blackside. Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike. 1988. 13 min.
Bayard Rustin, interviewed by Blackside. March on Washington, civil rights activism after World War II. 1979. 54 min.
William Rutherford, interviewed by Blackside. SCLC, Poor People's Campaign, Resurrection City, Martin Luther Kin. 1988. 58 min.
Ruby Sales, interviewed by Blackside. SNCC, Lowndes County AL, Tuskegee Institute, Stokely Carmichael, Jonathan Daniels. 1988. 25 min.
1950s? It Can Happen in Missouri, recruitment flyer. Lula Farmer, CORE. Undated (possibly late 1940s, more likely 1950s) 1955? The Negro Voter in the South, Margaret Price, SRC. Undated (presumed 1955 or 1956). 60 pages. 1960 Student Protest Movement (continued) (page missing?). List of student anti-segregation actions in April 1960. Unsigned SRC? 1960 The Old Order Changeth, list of Virginia stores no longer segregating their lunch counters as of September 1st. J. Rupert Picott, Virginia Teachers Association (VTA). 1960 An Open Statement supporting boycott of stores with segregated lunch counters. Virginia Teachers Association (VTA). 9/3/60 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer invitation to participate. Unsigned COFO. Undated (probably first half of 1964) 1964 Politics, proposal regarding Freedom Summer staffing and convention challenge. Dave Dennis(?) CORE/COFO. Undated (probably first half of 1964) 1964 Freedom Gazette, newsletter. Greenville MS. Unsigned COFO. 6/23/64 1964 Leland Freedom News, Washington County MS. Unsigned COFO. 7/23/64. 64? 65? Do You Plant Crops? ASCS election organizing document. Unsigned CORE. Undated (possibly 1964, 1965, or 1966). 1965 Letter to Wm. Douthard (ILGWU) from Judy Richardson, SNCC re cost of films. 6/28/65 1965 Memo to Jack Greenberg (LDF) from James Dombroski (SCEF) re bail receipt for Ivanhoe Donaldson (SNCC) from 1963 Danville VA arrest. 1967 Notes on Puerto Rico for SNCC, unsigned SNCC research. 5/1/67. 9 pages. 1969 MFDP State Convention flyer. 1/5/69 1970? Time to Fight, SCLC voter registration flyer or poster. Undated (possibly 1969-1971) Southern Patriot December 1952, SCEF. School desregation cases, Eleanor Roosevelt, University Jim Crow protest
Southern Patriot, April 1953, SCEF. Race discrimination in medical care, AZ school integration, railroad segregation
Southern Patriot, May 1953, SCEF. school integration resistance, integration and Negro teacers, woman doctor beaten by Louisiana troopers
Southern Patriot, June 1953, SCEF. Rufus Clement & Atlanta smear campaign, West Virgina race relations
Southern Patriot, May 1954, SCEF. Sparkman election in AL, Eastland & Birmingham
Southern Patriot, June 1954, SCEF. school integration, separate but equal doctrine, reaction to Brown decision
WATS & Phone Reports (Log of daily phone-in reports)
SNCC April 2, 1964. Cambridge MD, Greenwood MS, Washington DC.
SNCC April 2, 1964. Greenwood MS arrests & police harassment, Hattiesburg MS arrests.
SNCC April 3, 1964. Greenwood MS legal, Little Rock AR, Jackson & McComb MS, Charleston WV protest march.
SNCC April 4, 1964. Jackson MS rpt, Hattiesburg MS voting rights case, plans for Greenwood MS Freedom Day
SNCC April 6, 1964. Natchez MS George Metcalf bombing and shooting, Jackson MS arrests, Vicksburg MS election campaign
SNCC April 9, 1964. Greenwood MS Freedom Day arrests and legal cases
SNCC April 10, 1964. Reports from Greenwood, Greenville, and Hattiesburg MS (arrests of visiting ministers)
6/64 COFO Negro First in Eastland's Back Yard, Indianola, MS. 6/24/64 COFO Negro Community Hit by Coke Bottles, Ruleville, MS 6/25/64 COFO Molotov Cocktail Hits Negro Church, Ruleville, MS. 1/21/65 COFO Hot Coffee Poured on Demonstrators during sit-in at Lea's restaurant, Hattiesburg MS. 1/23/65 COFO Beatings Follow Fourth Integration Attempt during sit-in at Lea's restaurant, Hattiesburg MS. Vietnam War, Military Draft, & GI Movement Documents
Documents: Vietnam War Background 1966 Proposal for a national Black anti-draft program, unsigned SNCC. August 9 1966. 3 pages. Documents from the Northern Wing of the Movement
5/24/56 Several Salute and Support the Heroes of the South Montgomery Bus Boycott, NYC Madison Square Garden support rally and fundraiser flyer. A. Philip Randolph, NAACP, In Friendship. 9/28/63 PANA, HRPA The Black Revolution - What Next? NYC rally flyer. Pan-African Nationalist Association in the Americas, Human Rights Political Association 9/64 Siege at Freemont Place, Ramparts magazine. Rumsford Fair Housing Act overturn, Catholic Church, Cardinal McIntyre, racism. 1968 P&FP Organizing materials, S.F. Peace & Freedom Party. Undated. (6 documents) 1968 P&FP Freedom? Peace & Freedom Party brochure. Undated 1968. 1968 P&FP Peace & Freedom Party Joint organizing materials. Peace & Freedom Party and Black Panther Party. (2 documents) 1968 P&FP What is Peace, What is Freedom, pamphlet. Ecology Action. Undated. (12 pages) 1968 P&FP Peace and Freedom Review publicaton. Various authors, Connie Pohle, Stella Pilgrim editors. April 15, 1968. (14 pages) 4/29/68 4 groups Joint Statement opposing arrest of Reies Tijerina on phony charges, to prevent participation in Poor Peoples Campaign and Peace & Freedom presidential campaign.
1/3/62 Daddy (Holsaert) Dearest Faith, note to daughter in Albany GA 1/21/62 Daddy (Holsaert) Dearest Faith, note to daughter in Albany GA 12/10/62 SUNY Notice to Faith Holsaert of academic absence and scholarship forfeiture, University of the State of New York 63? 64? Faith Holsaert, SNCC Dear Ciff. Undated (presumed August or later 1963 or 1964) 63? 64? Faith Holsaert, SNCC Dear Ciff. Undated (presumed August or later 1963 or 1964) 1/4/65 Ottinger Response from Hon. Ottinger to Judy Richardson waffling on the MFDP Congressional Challenge 7/65 SCOPE Pike County Alabama mass meeting flyers. Unsigned, SCLC/SCOPE. Undated (probably July 1965) 8/65 SCOPE Pike County Alabama report. Unsigned, SCLC/SCOPE. July 19-Aug 14, 1965 1/27/66 Dottie Zellner, SNCC Dear Mary, personal note to Mary King 9/9/65 Barry Dawson The God's Truth letter to Judy Richardson re gassing of Girard College protesters.
Chude Allen The Political is Personal: Oral History, by Amanda Tewes UC Berkeley. Freedom Summer Mississippi, Spellman College, women's liberation, etc. 2022 257 pages Marion Barry Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Nashville, TN. 1979. 12 pages. Fatima Cortez The Work is Unfinished: Oral History, by Amanda Tewes UC Berkeley. CORE, Freedom Summer Louisiana, women of color liberation, reproductive rights, etc. 2024. 131 pages Michael Harrington Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Poor People's Campaign, Dr. Martin Luther King. 1988. 13 pages. Coretta Scott King Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Martin Luther King, Poor People's campaign, SCLC, Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike. 1985. 33 pages. Marion Kwan Freedom Fighter for All: Oral History, by Amanda Tewes UC Berkeley. S.F. Chinatown, Delta Ministry, Holly Springs Mississippi, role of women in the movement, etc. 2024. 98 pages Leo Lillard
(Kwame Lillard)Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Nashville, TN sit-ins, Freedom Riders Birmingham. 1985. 13 pages. Joseph Rauh Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re MFDP legal, NAACP. 1985. 14 pages. Mimi Feingold Real Activist, Educator, and Historian: Oral History, by Amanda Tewes UC Berkeley. CORE, Freedom Rides, Louisiana, women's liberation, etc. 2022. 112 pages Taylor Rogers Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike. 1988. 13 pages. Bayard Rustin Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re March on Washington, civil rights activism after World War II. 1979. 21 pages. William Rutherford Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re SCLC, Poor People's Campaign, Resurrection City, Martin Luther King. 1988. 30 pages. Ruby Sales Interview for Eyes on the Prize by Blackside re SNCC, Lowndes County AL, Tuskegee Institute, Stokely Carmichael, Jonathan Daniels. 1988. 13 pages. Affidavits of Repression, Retaliation & Violence
1964 Affadavit of Jesse Harris, re Jackson MS arrests, beatings, jailings, and prison farm. 6/1/64. 3 pages. 1964 Notarized statement of Ed Hollandeer, CORE. Re arrest in Canton MS, detention by federal marshalls, beating by white prisoners in Hinds Co. Jail. 7/10/64. 3 pages. 1964 Affadavit of James Black, re arrest and police brutality in Starkville MS. 6/9/64. 2 pages. 1964 Affadavit of Ora Lee Bryant, re bombing and shooting in McComb MS. 7/28/64. 1964 Affadavit of Curtis Hayes (Curtis Muhammad), re terror bombing in McComb MS. 7/29/64.
1960 Lunch-Counter Desegregation in Corpus Christi, Galveston, and San Antonio TX, Kenneth Morland. May 1960. 25 pages.
CORE: South and North Compared Bruce Hartford MLK's Albany Movement Was Not a Failure Clennon L. King
No new names added to the Roll Call this month
No new memories or tributes added this month
No new answers added this month.
Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely: If All We Had Were Words—A poem for Rev. Dr. King ... in these times.
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.
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.
Love Letter from Pig: My Brother's Story of Freedom Summer, by Julie Kabat. University Press of Mississippi, 2023. Based on primary-source materials, the personal story of volunteer Luke Kabat and the Meridian MS (Lauderdale Co.) project.
No Ordinary Joe: Lesson From a Life of Community Organizing for Social Change, by Jerome Christensen. Wordshop at Fourth & Sioux, September 2023. Life of Civil Rights Movement activist and community organizer Joe Morse.
Standing, by Ernest McMillan. August, 2023.
My Country Is the World: Staughton Lynd's Writings, Speeches, and Statements against the Vietnam War, edited by Luke Smith. Foreword by Staughton and Alice Lynd. Haymarket Books, 2023.
The Struggle of Struggles, by Vera Pigee (1924-2007), edited by Frangoise Hamlin, University Press of Mississippi. 2023. New edition of Vera Pigee autobiography chronicles Coahoma County MS, NAACP, Women's leadership, grassroots organizing, citizenship schools, voter registration, and the Baptist church.
A Day I Ain't Never Seen Before Remembering the Civil Rights Movement in Marks, Mississippi, by Joe Bateman, Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, and Richard Arvedon. How the civil rights movement unfolded in a small rural town, far from the cameras.
Stayed On Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family's Journey, by Dan Berger, Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons. An authorized biography of Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons that brings into focus the lives of two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom. Basic Books, January 2023.
By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners, by Margaret Burnham, 2023. Investigation of Jim Crow-era racial violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy. If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law?
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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