Growing Pains

  • Gregg L. Michel
Chapter

Abstract

In a speech at SSOC’s first Southwide conference in Atlanta in November 1964, J. Metz Rollins, a black minister who had been involved in the Nashville movement, counseled the students not to “talk yourselves to death. You don’t have to have all the ultimate answers before you act.” SSOC’s early history suggests that the activists fully agreed with Rollins. In the weeks and months following SSOC’s creation, the group did not allow discussions about its structure and program to prevent it from actively participating in the civil rights struggle. In fact, more than at any other time during the group’s existence, civil rights issues dominated SSOC’s agenda in 1964. As a result, SSOC quickly gained legitimacy among activists on predominantly white southern campuses, particularly those where student anti-segregation work pre-dated SSOC’s founding. Heartened by the activism of their fellow white collegians, the students in the new group believed that SSOC, as an organization devoted to coordinating local activities, was poised to lead a progressive movement of young white southerners.

Keywords

Gulf Coast Black Community Executive Committee Black Student White Student 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. 3.
    Ron K. Parker, “The Southern Student Organizing Committee,” 24, Edwin Hamlett Papers (uncatalogued), Special Collections and University Archives, The Jean and Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee (also in box 2, David and Ronda Kotelchuck Papers (Southern Student Organizing Committee Papers, 1959–1977) and Steve Wise Papers (Southern Student Organizing Committee Additional Papers, 1963–1979 and Southern Student Organizing Committee Papers, 1959–1977), Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia); Sue Thrasher to Franklin D. Roosevelt III, 5 December 1964, folder 3, Southern Student Organizing Committee Papers, 1964–1968, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia; Sue Thrasher to SSOC, 25 May 1964, in the author’s possession; interview, Sue Thrasher (interviewed by Ronald Grele), 15 December 1984, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University, New York, New York; interview, Thrasher, 1 September 1994; Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 102–103;Google Scholar
  2. Bryant Simon, “Southern Student Organizing Committee: A New Rebel Yell in Dixie” (Honors Essay: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1983), 23; New Rebel, 1:1 (27 May 1964), and “Notes on SNCC meeting, May 7, 1964,” folder 5, box 1, in the SSOC Papers, King Center.Google Scholar
  3. 4.
    While Freedom Summer is a prominent touchstone in the historiography of the civil rights movement, few scholars have given any attention to the White Folks Project or to the southern whites who participated in it. Works that ignore the White Folks Project do a particular disservice for they create the perception that the only whites involved in Freedom Summer were middle- and upper-class northern and western students who went South for the summer. Among these studies are Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1964);Google Scholar
  4. Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988);Google Scholar
  5. Nicolaus Mills, Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America (Chicago, Ill.: Ivan R. Dee, 1992);Google Scholar
  6. Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); and the film “Freedom on My Mind,” Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford producers (Berkeley, Calif.: Clarity Educational Productions, 1994).Google Scholar
  7. Studies that briefly treat the White Folks Project include Elizabeth Sutherland, ed., Letters from Mississippi (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965), 154, 159–160;Google Scholar
  8. Mary Aickin Rothschild, A Case of Black and White: Northern Volunteers and the Southern Freedom Summers, 1964–1965 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 34–35, 67–68; andGoogle Scholar
  9. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 244, 252. In their limited discussions of the project, these works often gloss over its complexities and offer factually incorrect information. For instance, Rothschild writes that all of the southern volunteers “came from large ‘New South’ metropolitan areas or attended Ivy League schools” (34–35) when, in fact, some of the southern participants arrived in Mississippi from such decidedly non-metropolitan areas as Athens, Georgia, and Sewannee, Tennessee.Google Scholar
  10. More thorough considerations of the White Folks Project are offered by Len Holt, The Summer that Didn’t End (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1965), 132–141;Google Scholar
  11. Irwin Klibaner, Conscience of a Troubled South: The Southern Conference Educational Fund, 1946–1966 (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 217–219; Carson, In Struggle, 118–119; andGoogle Scholar
  12. Robert Pardun, Prairie Radical: A Journey through the Sixties (Los Gatos, Ca.: Shire Press, 2001).Google Scholar
  13. 5.
    Student Voice, 4:4 (11 November 1963), 5:8 (3 March 1964), and Special Issue (spring 1964); Carson, In Struggle, 97–103; McAdam, Freedom Summer, 35–41; Dittmer, Local People, 200–210; Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, 290–298; David Harris, Dreams Die Hard (New York: St. Martin’s/Marek, 1982), 30–54;Google Scholar
  14. Richard Cummings, The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream (New York: Grove Press, 1985), 223–257;Google Scholar
  15. William H. Chafe, Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 180–196;Google Scholar
  16. William H. Chafe, “The Personal and the Political: Two Case Studies,” in U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays, Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 206–207.Google Scholar
  17. 6.
    Sue Thrasher to SSOC, 25 May 1964, in the author’s possession; Ed Hamlett to Howard Romaine, April 1964, and Sue Thrasher to unknown correspondent, 20 May 1964, in “Material from SOC [sic] Files,” in the possession of Harlon Joye; Christina Greene, “ ‘We’ll Take Our Stand’: Race, Class, and Gender in the Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964–1969,” in Hidden Histories of Women in the New South, Virginia Bernhard, Betty Brandon, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Theda Perdue, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner, eds. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 184.Google Scholar
  18. 9.
    Ed Hamlett, “White Folk’s Project,” Hamlett Papers (also located in Ed King Collection, L. Zenobia Coleman Library, Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Mississippi); “Investigative Report, Oxford, Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi,” 26 June 1964, folder 10, box 135, Series II, Sub-Series 9, Sovereignty Commission, Paul B. Johnson Family Papers, McCain Library and Archives, University Libraries, The University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi; interview, Thrasher, 15 December 1984; Author’s notes on Anne Braden, “Remembering Freedom Summer,” presented at the Southern Historical Association 60th annual meeting, 9 November 1994, Louisville, Kentucky. On the training sessions for Freedom Summer, see Carson, In Struggle, 111–114; Dittmer, Local People, 242–246; McAdam, Freedom Summer, 66–75; James F. Findlay, Jr., Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 84–87.Google Scholar
  19. 10.
    “We’ll Take Our Stand,” Hamlett Papers; Sam Shirah, “A Proposal for Expanded Work Among Southern White Students and an Appalachian Project,” n.d. (ca. mid-1963), folder 5, Sam Shirah Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin; Southern Patriot, April 1964; Ron K. Parker and David Kotelchuck, “Southern Student Organizing Committee,” Constance Curry Papers (uncatalouged), Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia; Nashville Banner, 29 June 1964; interview, Thrasher, 15 December 1984; Pardun, Prairie Radical, 59–60, 62; Holt, The Summer that Didn’t End, 137–138.Google Scholar
  20. 17.
    Ed Hamlett [?], “Notes on White Folks Project,” Douglas Tiberiis White Folks Project Collection; Student Voice, 5:16 (15 July 1964); “Wats Reports,” A:VII:7, reel 15 and “Mississippi Summer Project: Running Summary of Incidents,” A:XV:157, reel 38, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959–1972 (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilm Corporation of America, 1982); Pardun, Prairie Radical, 61–62; Constance Curry et al., Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000), 235; Ed Hamlett to author, 3 April 2003.Google Scholar
  21. 25.
    Hamlett, “White Folk’s Project” and Ed Hamlett to Bob Moses, ca. July 1964, Hamlett Papers; “White Community Project Workshop,” July 27–28, 1964, folder 1, box 5, SSOC and Gardner Papers; “Bob Williams, 25 (?),” 22 July 1964, Hamlett White Folks Project Collection; Free Biloxi Herald, 14 August 1964, generously loaned to the author by Harlon Joye; “Wats Report,” A:VII:7, reel 15, SNCC Papers; Holt, The Summer that Didn’t End, 133–134; Pardun, Prairie Radical, 63, 66; Mary Stanton, Freedom Walk: Mississippi or Bust (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 175.Google Scholar
  22. 26.
    Anne Braden, “The Southern Freedom Movement in Perspective,” Monthly Review, 17:3 (July–August 1965), 68; interview, Thrasher, 1 September 1994; Hamlett quoted in Klibaner, Conscience of a Troubled South, 219; Maxwell, “We Must Be Allies …,” A:XV:225, reel 40, SNCC Papers. COFO, in fact, did agree to continue and to expand the White Folks Project in the fall of 1964. Southern Patriot, November 1964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. 32.
    Archie Allen, “Fundraising Report for SSOC,” ca. December 1964, folder 7, and Archie Allen to Phillip Hirschkop, ca. September 1964, folder 3, SSOC Papers, University of Virginia; Simon, “Southern Student Organizing Committee,” 24.Google Scholar
  24. 33.
    On SCEF-SRC relations, see John Egerton, Speak Now against the Day: The Generation before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 312–316, 355–356, 432–442, 564–566.Google Scholar
  25. General treatments of SCEF include Linda Reed, Simple Decency & Common Sense: The Southern Conference Movement, 1938–1963 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), esp. 129–184; Klibaner, Conscience of a Troubled South;Google Scholar
  26. Anthony P. Dunbar, Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets, 1929–1959 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), 187–219; andGoogle Scholar
  27. David L. Chappell, Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 41–47. General works on the SRC are fewer in number and tend to focus on the years prior to 1954.Google Scholar
  28. See, for instance, Martin Sosna, In Search ofthe Silent South: Southern Liberals and the Race Issue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 152–164;Google Scholar
  29. John Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920–1944 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 202–222;Google Scholar
  30. Julia Anne McDonough, “Men and Women of Goodwill: A History of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and the Southern Regional Council, 1919–1954” (Ph.D. Dissertation: University of Virginia, 1993); andGoogle Scholar
  31. Egerton, Speak Now against the Day, esp. 301–312, 432–437, 446–448, 481–483, and 564–568.Google Scholar
  32. 47.
    Newsletter: Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1:3 (December 1964); Hamlett quoted in “Agents of Change: Southern White Students in the Civil Rights Movement,” A Public Seminar, 7 April 1994, Charlottesville, Virginia, in the author’s possession; unnamed SSOC activist quoted in November 1964 letter to unnamed philanthropic foundation representative, in “Material from SOC [sic] Files,” in the possession of Harlon Joye; interview, Anne Braden, 25 April 1993. SSOC’s move toward biracialism is discussed in Parker, “The Southern Student Organizing Committee,” 14, Hamlett Papers; “Report on Southwide Fall Conference,” in 1965–66 Proposal, folder 1, SSOC Papers, University of Virginia; Southern Patriot, April 1965; Anne Braden, “The Southern Freedom Movement in Perspective,” Monthly Review, 17:3 (July–August 1965), 66–67. On SNCC’s Waveland Retreat, see Carson, In Struggle, 140–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. 54.
    J. Anthony Lukas, Don’t Shoot—We Are Your Children!, third edition (New York: Random House, 1971 [first edition: New York: Random House, 1968]), 156; Laurel (Mississippi) Leader-Call, 23, 24, 26, and 28 December 1964; Newsletter: Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1:3 (December 1964) and 2:1 (January 1965); “Agents of Change,” A Public Seminar, 7 April 1994; interview, Nan Grogan Orrock, 14 November 1994; Ed Hamlett to John Doar, ca. December 1964, “Material from SOC [sic] Files,” in the possession of Harlon Joye.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Gregg L. Michel 2004

Authors and Affiliations

  • Gregg L. Michel

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations