Staff
The Movement History Initiative (MHI) is a collaboration among veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC Legacy Project), today's activists and grassroots organizations (e.g., New Georgia Project and BYP100), the John Hope Franklin Research Center, Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and noted scholars and archivists at Duke University and other institutions. The group first met in 2013 to conceive a project that would present a different narrative of the Civil Rights Movement, telling that story from the ground up and the inside out. MHI partners focus on preserving the legacy of the grassroots organizing tradition and its influence on the black freedom struggle of the 1960’s and on identifying how that tradition is carried on through contemporary movements. Over the years, the MHI has developed two websites (One Person, One Vote and the SNCC Digital Gateway); two expansive Critical Oral History programs, featuring both inter and intra-generational conversations; two K-12 Teacher Institutes; several workshops; a voting rights conference; and video documentation for three national conferences. Through this work, the partners have built relationships across generations and have documented an intergenerational transfer of movement experience in real time.
Upcoming Events
March 22, 2025: Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (Birmingham, AL)
Featuring SNCC veteran Judy Richardson, and movement scholar, Emilye Crosby
- 10:00 am-2:00 pm CT Women & Gender in SNCC Learning Toolkit Workshop & Discussion (register here--in person only)
April 4-5, 2025 Claflin University (Orangeburg, SC) (register here)
Featuring SNCC veteran Judy Richardson, and movement scholar, Emilye Crosby
- April 4: Women & Gender in SNCC Roundtable Discussion (in-person & livestreamed)
- April 5: Freedom Reaching Roundtable Discussion & Workshop (in-person only)
- April 5: Women and Gender Learning Toolkit Workshop (in-person only)
April 21, 2025: Community Conversation (online)
- 7:00-8:30pm ET: Women & Gender in SNCC (register here)
April 26, 2025: Museum of Mississippi History & Mississippi Civil Rights Museum (Jackson, MS)
Featuring SNCC veteran Judy Richardson, and movement scholar, Emilye Crosby
- 10:00 am-2:00 pm CT Black Power Learning Toolkit Workshop & Discussion (register here--in person only)
Partners, projects, and programs
SNCC Legacy Project
- SNCC and Grassroots Organizing: Building a More Perfect Union (2023-2025)
- SNCC & Grassroots Organizing Discussion Series, Arts & Culture Toolkit (PDF)
- SNCC & Grassroots Organizing: Interpretive Booklet (PDF)
- SNCC Legacy Project, Center for Documentary Studies Critical Oral History Conference
- "The Road to the Voting Rights Act of 1965" (2018)
- "The Emergence of Black Power, 1964-1967" (2016)
SNCC Digital Gateway: Learn from the Past, Organize for the Future, Make Democracy Work
- SNCC Digital Gateway Project Interviews and Clips on Vimeo
- SNCC Digital Gateway Closing Exercises (2018)
- Music and the Movement, Sept. 19, 2017, North Carolina Central University
- Organizing Lowndes County: Then and Now, April 10, 2017, Duke University
- The Struggle Continues: A Dialogue with SNCC Veterans, September 29, 2016, Duke University
- Our Stories, Your Leagcy: A Dialogue with SNCC Veterans, March 9, 2016, Duke University
Publications
- "The Rhetoric and the Reality of the New Southern Strategy" by Courtland Cox, Nse Ufot, Charles V. Taylor, and Emilye Crosby, Southern Cultures, vol. 30 no. 1, Spring 2024
- "Cultural Memory as Social Justice: The Critical Oral History Methodology" by Danita Mason-Hogans, Wesley Hogan, and Geri Augusto, The Grassroots Leadership & the Arts for Change Corner
- "Building and Transferring Movement Informational Wealth: The SNCC Digital Gateway" by Courtland Cox, Karlyn Forner, John Gartrell, Wesley Hogan, Jennifer Lawson, Isabell Moore and Naomi Nelson, Journal of African American History, vol. 105, no. 4, Fall 2020
- "Learn from the Past, Organize for the Future: Building the SNCC Digital Gateway" by Geri Augusto, Molly Bragg, William Chafe, Charles Cobb, Courtland Cox, Emilye Crosby, Karlyn Forner, John Gartrell, Wesley Hogan, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Jennifer Lawson, Naomi Nelson, Judy Richardson, Will Sexton, and Timothy Tyson, Digital Community Engagement, Partnering Communities with the Academy, 2020
News and press releases
2023
- SNCC and Grassroots Organizing: Building a More Perfect Union, National Endowment for the Humanities
- Living History from One Generation to the Next with the SNCC Legacy Project, The Mellon Foundation
2021
- SNCC 60th Anniversary Conference, SNCC Legacy Project
- Community Organizing, Youth Leadership and SNCC, Teaching Hard History Podcast
2019
- The Civil Rights Movement Archive, National Park Service
2018
- CDS and SNCC Continue to Share the Grassroots Lessons of the Civil Rights Movement, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
- Project Connects Civil Rights Activists to Young Organizers of Today, WUNC
- Putting SNCC Veterans into the Civil Rights Era Spotlight, Duke Today
