Ever since Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement established the CRMA (formerly known as "CRMVet") in 1999, it has been almost entirely funded by personal donations from Freedom Movement activists 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 here to make a donation to keep us alive and growing. Thank you for anything you are able to contribute.
Please consider converting your PayPal donation to an automatic monthly contribution by checking the "Make this a monthly donation" box on the amount screen when it pops up.
According to Google, there were approximately 12,000 visits to the CRMA website during December for a rought average of 380 per day. This is approximately 26% less than December of last year. Roughly 23% of our visitors came from outside the U.S.
As of January 1st, our online archive contains 9693 searchable pages, documents, and images, plus 295 videos in our Vimeo video channel. Google reports that out on the global internet here are 18,987 backlinks to our CRMA site, sections, and pages by organizations and people using us as an information resource.
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat
it.
Those who prevent learning from history want to repeat it.
We have no doubt that 2024 will be a year of intense political action against resurgant white-supremacy, attacks on voting rights, and assaults against democracy itself. For us, an aspect of that struggle is building and preserving the CRMA as an online racial-justice archive, and promoting our inside-out and up-from-the-bottom understanding of our Freedom Movement history.
We know that the South, particularly Florida, is the epicenter of MAGA assaults against all those who stand for human rights.
"What we are witnessing in Florida is an intellectual reign of terror. There is a tremendous sense of dread right now, not just among faculty; it's tangible among students and staff as well. People are intellectually and physically scared. We are being named an enemy of the State." — Professor LeRoy Pernell, Florida A&M (FAMU), AAUP Report (PDF).
But the damaging effects of MAGA intimidation and retaliation are not restricted to that one state — they are widespread and nationwide. We've just completed an annual review/update of our online Civil Rights Movement Archives, Centers & Museums database. We had to delete several hundred links to oral histories, documents, and archives because those sites and pages no longer exist out on the web. No doubt some of these disappearances are due to normal internet churn as sites go out of existence or pages are removed for various reasons. But we suspect that some were taken down for political reasons.
And there's also a less well-known threat to preserving open access to our history. 'Content' corporations such as Cengage-Gale are monetizing culture and history — including ours. They buy archive collections from financially-stressed institutions, then slap a paywall in front of the material, charging significant subscription fees to libraries, schools, publishers, and others. To access the information that used to be freely available, you now must have a Login ID from a subscribing organization. That may not be a problem for faculty or students at elite universities, but many four-year and community colleges cannot afford such subscriptions. Nor can most public high schools or local libraries.
For example, we used to provide links to more than 175 oral-histories of Freedom Movement veterans that were contained in the Ralph Bunche Oral History Collection at Howard University. Now they are behind a Cengarn paywall.
Since we are committed to free, open access, we had to delete those links from our public database. This is a painful loss because the Bunche interviews were conducted in the late 1960s when interviewees were either still engaged in struggle or their memories were fresh. And some of the interviews now sequestered behind the Cengage paywall are the only ones we've been able to locate for those individuals.
We and our Sister Sites remain dedicated to the fight for freedom, justice, and equality that we joined more six decades ago — and continue to wage to this day. For us, MAGA political assaults and corporate monetization mean that once again we have to rely on ourselves and our communities to create and build independent, alternative information sources that are willing and able to defy political pressure and corporate monetization. Resources that are dedicated to preserving and promoting our history as an aspect of the generations-long struggle for human rights that we are so proud to be a part of.
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.
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.
Featured Remembrances. We have gathered together and set up a collection of the richest, most powerful, and most moving tributes to and remembrances of beloved brothers and sisters whose presence no longer graces us.
This month we expanded, updated, and culled dead links out of our Civil Rights Movement Web Links and Database of Archives, Centers, Museums & Monuments databases.
Now Available: Paperback edition of This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Voting Rights Fight by Maria Gitin. Combining memoir with oral history, creates a vivid and searing portrait of the Freedom Summer of 1965 and the community-based activism of Wilcox County Alabama county that illustrates the heart of the civil rights movement.
Now Available: 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.
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.
According to Google, our top-ten, most-visited sections and individual pages in December were:
Section Contents, Landing & Reference Pages
- Are You "Qualified" to Vote?—Literacy Tests & Voter Applications
- Site Search: Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Original Freedom Movement Documents
- Freedom Rides and Freedom Riders Resources
- Montogmery Bus Boycott & Rosa Parks Resources
- Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
- Freedom Movement Bibliography
- Civil Rights Movement History 1951-1968
- Roll Call of Freedom Movement Veterans
- Freedom Movement Videos
Individual Pages & Documents
- Photo Album: The Sit-Ins—Off Campus and Into Movement (1960)
- Louisiana Voter Application and Literacy Tests
- Photo Album: Freedom Summer (1964)
- The Other America, Dr. Martin Luther King. (1967)
- Alabama Voter Literacy Test
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1960 (student sit-ins)
- Photo Album: Freedom Movement Posters
- Photo Album: Freedom Movement in Art
- Poems of Langston Hughes
- Civil Rights Movement History: 1961 (Freedom Rides, MS voter registration, Albany GA)
(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 December:
John and Mary Glustrom Interview. By Carole Merrit. 2006. Re Freedom Movement and race relations in Atlanta GA. 62min.
Nan Pendergrast Interview. By Carole Merrit. 2006. Re Georgia Council on Human Relations, Help Our Public Education (HOPE), NAACP, League of Women Voters in Atlanta GA. 61min.
Sam Young, Jr, by Will Griffin, re SNCC, Southwest Georgia Project. Black farmers. School integration. 2013. 42min.
Barbara Vickers, by Joseph Mosnier, re St. Augustine, FL, Dr. Robert Hayling, organized protests and kneel-ins, church segregation, monument to foot soldiers. 2011. 42min.
Mr. Say Ain't Nothing, Mr. Do's the Man, the guiding principle of SNCC's political organizing. 2021. 1min.
The Struggle for Human Rights. Viewing the struggle for justice and human rights as a long, complex, and multi-layered journey. A. Philip Randolph and John Lewis' speech at the March on Washington. Ella Baker and the sit-ins. 2021. 6min.
Control the Narrative. SNCC and the essentiality of controlling the narrative as a frame of reference from which action is taken. The strategic centrality of "freedom." The importance of "Black Power" and "Black Lives Matter." 2021. 6min.
Problems, Solutions and the Struggle for Power, What we see as problems our opponents see as solutions. Voting rights and who exercises politial power. 2021. 3min.
Politics as an Expression of Economic Interests. The vote is the currency of politics. Who defines and who decides? 2021. 4min.
The Movement History Initiative, developing collaborations with HCBUs and Africana Studies departments to present our history from the inside-out, and the bottom up. 2021. 2min.
The SLP Digital Movement Platform, purpose, goals and objectives, 2021. 2min.
New Audio recordings added in December
Joseph Lee Marlbough: Interview by Mimi Feingold re ASCS elections & economic justice in Greensburg, LA. 7min
Database of CRM-Related Archives, Repositories, and Visitor Centers, culled and updated.
1964 SNCC press lists & contacts, SNCC Communications Dept. Circa 1964 (14pages) 1964? Friends of SNCC Offices undated (possibly 1964) 1964? SNCC Northern Contact List undated (possibly during Freedom Summer 1964). 1964 To Atlanta Office Staff, memo re purpose and direction of SNCC and SNCC Comunnications Department, Mary King. 2/3/64 1965 Action Memo to Friends of SNCC re Selma and Marion, Betty Barman, SNCC. 2/5/65 1965 Memo re SNCC support work, Jim Forman, SNCC. 2/23/65. 1965 Dear Lucy, note to Lucy Montgomery re Friends of SNCC and support work. Betty Garman, SNCC. 3/23/65 1965 Report on Alabama, unsigned Chicago SNCC. 1964 COFO Communications People Mississippi, Mary King, SNCC. 7/3/64 1965 Vote YES August 17, election flyer. Unsigned MFDP. August 1965. 1965 Freedom Now, CORE greeting cards sold for fundraising. By Lewis Suzuki. Voices of Americus and S. W. Georgia, Vol2, No3. Unsigned SNCC. 3/20/65.
1/26/65 SNCC Newsflash from Hattiesburg MS. Re beatings 2/25/65 SNCC SNCC Press Release Announces '65 Plans, WATS & Phone Reports (Log of daily phone-in reports)
SNCC, January 21, 1964. Hattiesburg, Greenwood, Washington.
SNCC, January 21, 1964. Hattiesburg, Greenwood.
SNCC, January 22, 1964. Canton, Madison Co.
SNCC, January 22, 1964. Hattiesburg MS, Selma AL, Pine Bluff AR, Greenville MS, Jackson MS.
SNCC, January 22, 1964. Oscar Chase & Bob Moses arrested in Hattiesburg MS.
SNCC, January 22, 1964. Hattiesburg MS march, Pine Bluff AR, Atlanta GA, Jim Collier arrested in Canton MS.
SNCC, January 23, 1964. Canton MS arrests.
SNCC, January 23, 1964. Arrests in Jackson MS, Pine Bluff AR, Canton MS. Bomb discovered in Cambridge MD.
SNCC, January 24, 1964. Dallas TX segregation, Jackson MS arrests, Hattiesburg MS Bob Moses trial, Canton MS arrests.
SNCC, January 25, 1964. Canton MS arrests, Raleigh NC, Indianola MS, Hattiesburg MS.
Southern Regional Council (SRC) documents, publications, & articles.
1/46 The White Primary vs Democracy, Ira DeA Reid. New South. 1/54 The Color Line in Libraries, Anna Holden. New South. Racial segregation in southern public libraries. 3/54 Literacy and the Free Mind, Marion Wright. New South. Importance of literacy and libraries in the freedom struggle 11/54 "Justice and Equality for All", unsigned Black educators. New South. Response to Brown v Board of Education ruling. 11/54 Integration in the Armed Forces, James C. Evans. New South. Report & analyses.
Vietnam War & Military Draft Documents
1967 Documents: Spring Mobilization Committee Against the Vietnam War, February-April 1967. (18 documents) 1967 Documents: Student Mobilization Committee. April-July, 1967 (7 documents) 1967 Documents: Draft Resistance National Mobilization Committee, Draft Resistance Project. 1967. (7 documents) 1967 Documents: National Mobilization Against the Vietnam War. 1967. (22 documents) 1967 Planning maps for Pentagon protest Bruce Hartford, National Mobilization. July-August 1967. Documents from the Northern Wing of the Movement
1/20/65 FoS Friends of the Mississippi Project Newsletter, Vol.1 No.1 SF State BSU/TWLF-Led Student & Faculty Strike (1968-1969)
The Partisan, AFT Strike Bulletin, 2/2/69. (2pages)
Strike Support Materials from University of Colorado (Boulder). March 1969. (8 documents)
Student Anti-Strike Materials, various authors. 1968-1969. (14 documents)
Administration Strike Documents & Materials, by various SFSC and State College Trustees and administrators. 1966-1969. (26 documents)
1/1/60 Amzie Moore, RCNL Letter to Jim Dombroski of SCEF, re debt and fight to save his service station. 1/17/60 Unsigned Letter to James Gilliam, re payments for Amzie Moore project 1/27/60 Jim Dombrowski, SCEF Letter to Amzie Moore of RCNL, re financing. 2/16/60 Frederick Paul Huey Letter to Amzie Moore, RNCL, re incident with police in Ruleville MA 2/24/60 Jim Dombrowski, SCEF Letter to Amzie Moore, RNCL, re project advisory committee 8/20/65 Kenner Christiansen, COFO Weekly Report, Valley View, August 14-20. MS 8/22/65 Rick Saling, COFO Weekly Report, Valley View, August 15-22. MS 8/23/65 Nancy Stoller, SNCC Dear Lucy, note to Lucy Mongtomery re needed materials and funds for Arkansas SNCC 8/24/65 Nancy Stoller, SNCC Dear Lucy, follow up note to Lucy Mongtomery re materials and funds for Arkansas SNCC 9/29/65 Sue Thrasher, SSOC Dear Mrs. Montgomery, urgent funding request. 10/9/65 Charles Horowitz, FIC Natchez Mississippi – Six Weeks of Crisis, MS. 8-page report.
Raphael Cassimere Interview by Catherine van Es re NAACP and Freedom Movement in New Orleans, LA. 2018. 10pages Charles Kimbrough Oral History Interview, by Gwen Smith, re segregation, Tuskegee, Alabama sit-ins, NAACP, Nashville TN. 2005. 13pages Joseph Lee Marlbough Interview re ASCS elections & economic justice in Greensburg, LA Salynn McCollum Oral History Interview, by K.G. Bennett re Freedom Rides, Highlander Folk School, nonviolence, Nashville Student Movement, SNCC, CORE. 2005. 44pages Rip Patton Oral History Interview, by K.G. Bennett, re Nashville Student Movement, Freedom Rides, etc. 2003. 16pages. Sam Young Jr. Interview by Will Griffin, SOHP. Re Albany GA movement. 2013 Video Mrs. Barbara Vickers Interview by Joseph Mosnier, SOHP. Re St. Augustine FL movement. 2011 Video
1965 It's Good To Be Back, speech excerpts. Paul Robeson. Freedomway, 3rd Quarter 1965 Paul Robeson – Inspirer of Youth, John Lewis, SNCC. Freedomway, 3rd Quarter. 1965 Civic Democracy in Tuskegee, Charles Gomillion. Freedomway, 3rd Quarter
No new names added to the Roll Call this month
No new discussion transcripts posted this month
No new answers added this month.
No new poems added this month.
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?
Anne Braden Speaks: Selected Writings and Speeches, 1947-1999, Ben Wilkins, editor. Monthly Review Press, August 2022. Representative collection of Braden's writings, speeches, and letters, covering the full spectrum of her activism: from the relationship between race and capitalism, to the role of the South in American society, to the political function of anti- communism.
Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, by Sam Pollard & Geeta Gandbhir, Multitude Films in association with The Atlantic. Story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Lowndes County Alabama. 2022. 90min.
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, webspinner@crmvet.org.
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