In this 50th year following the enactment of the Voting Rights Act a new website has launched that will peer deep into the roots of the civil rights movement that sparked the nationwide call for racial justice. Duke University collaborates for the first time with SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) founding members to provide more than just a timeline and recount of history. This project seeks to uncover the tactical and strategic minutiae of how this movement formed. Unlike some movements in the annals of history, this one was more chaotic and unhinged in its beginnings than it was coherent and unified. That came later.
The site; Onevotesncc.org, uses all types of media to accomplish its stated goal of documenting “how the bottom-up strategies of young people and black community leaders across the Deep South created an expansion of political, social and economic opportunity for all citizens in the 1960s.” The project is a powerful presentation of civil history as its approach is to present the history in a series of stories.
One particularly thought-provoking video is an interview with Chuck McDew, a founding student member of SNCC – Listen to his story explaining the day the committee was formed, its decision not to join with Martin Luther King and the SCLC, and its member’s feelings on whether nonviolent protest was really the answer.
We recommend bookmarking the site’s blog. Meanwhile, here is some more of what you will find on the site:
The personal stories of SNCC staff, mentors, locals and more
A Google map of the players and places that made up the movement.
A timeline of the movement.
