Hands on the Freedom Plow

by Holsaert, Faith S.; Noonan, Martha Prescod Norman; Richardson, Judy; Garman Robinson, Betty

• ISBN13: 9780252078880
• ISBN10: 0252078888
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-07-30
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

In Hands on the Freedom Plow,fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. The testimonies gathered here present a sweeping personal history of SNCC: early sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the movements in Alabama and Maryland; and Black Power and antiwar activism. Since the women spent time in the Deep South, many also describe risking their lives through beatings and arrests and witnessing unspeakable violence. These intense stories depict women, many very young, dealing with extreme fear and finding the remarkable strength to survive. The women in SNCC acquired new skills, experienced personal growth, sustained one another, and even had fun in the midst of serious struggle. Readers are privy to their analyses of the Movement, its tactics, strategies, and underlying philosophies. The contributors revisit central debates of the struggle including the role of nonviolence and self-defense, the role of white people in a black-led movement, and the role of women within the Movement and the society at large. Each story reveals how the struggle for social change was formed, supported, and maintained by the women who kept their "hands on the freedom plow." As the editors write in the introduction, "Though the voices are different, they all tell the same story--of women bursting out of constraints, leaving school, leaving their hometowns, meeting new people, talking into the night, laughing, going to jail, being afraid, teaching in Freedom Schools, working in the field, dancing at the Elks Hall, working the WATS line to relay horror story after horror story, telling the press, telling the story, telling the word. And making a difference in this world."

Author Biography

Faith S. Holsaert, Durham, North Carolina, teacher and fiction writer, has remained active in lesbian and women's, antiwar, and justice struggles. Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, community organizer, activist, homemaker, and teacher of history including the Civil Rights Movement, lives near Baltimore. Filmmaker and Movement lecturer Judy Richardson's projects include the PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize and other historical documentaries. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Betty Garman Robinson, a community organizer, lives in Baltimore and is active in the reemerging grassroots social justice movement. Jean Smith Young is a child psychiatrist who works with community mental health programs in the Washington, D.C., area. New York City consultant Dorothy M. Zellner wrote and edited for the Center for Constitutional Rights and CUNY Law School. All of the editors worked for SNCC.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Fighting for My Rights: One SNCC Woman's Experience, 1961-1964	p. 7
From Little Memphis Girl to Mississippi Amazon	p. 9
Entering Troubled Waters: Sit-ins, the Founding of SNCC, and the Freedom Rides, 1960-1963	p. 33
What We Were Talking about Was Our Future	p. 39
An Official Observer	p. 45
Onto Open Ground	p. 49
Two Variations on Nonviolence	p. 53
A Young Communist Joins SNCC	p. 55
Watching, Waiting, and Resisting	p. 61
Diary of a Freedom Rider	p. 67
They Are the Ones Who Got Scared	p. 76
Movement Leaning Posts: The Heart and Soul of the Southwest Georgia Movement, 1961-1963	p. 85
Ripe for the Picking	p. 91
Finding Form for the Expression of My Discontent	p. 100
Uncovered and Without Shelter, I Joined This Movement for Freedom	p. 119
We Turned This Upside-Down Country Right Side Up	p. 128
Everybody Called Me "Teach"	p. 140
I Love to Sing	p. 144
Since I Laid My Burden Down	p. 146
We Just Kept Going	p. 152
Standing Tall: The Southwest Georgia Movement, 1962-1963	p. 157
It Was Simply in My Blood	p. 163
Freedom-Faith	p. 172
Resistance U	p. 181
Caught in the Middle	p. 195
Get on Board: The Mississippi Movement through the Atlantic City Challenge, 1961-1964	p. 211
Standing Up for Our Beliefs	p. 217
Inside and Outside of Two Worlds	p. 223
They Didn't Know the Power of Women	p. 230
Do Whatever You Are Big Enough to Do	p. 240
Depending on Ourselves	p. 250
A Grand Romantic Notion	p. 257
If We Must Die	p. 266
Cambridge, Maryland: The Movement under Attack, 1961-1964	p. 271
The Energy of the People Passing through Me	p. 273
A Sense of Family: The National SNCC Office, 1960-1964	p. 299
Peek around the Mountain	p. 303
My Real Vocation	p. 311
A SNCC Blue Book	p. 326
Getting Out the News	p. 332
It's Okay to Fight the Status Quo	p. 344
SNCC: My Enduring "Circle of Trust"	p. 348
Working in the Eye of the Social Movement Storm	p. 366
In the Attics of My Mind	p. 381
Building a New World	p. 388
Fighting Another Day: The Mississippi Movement after Atlantic City, 1964-1966	p. 395
A Simple Question	p. 399
The Mississippi Cotton Vote	p. 403
The Freedom Struggle Was the Flame	p. 409
An Interracial Alliance of the Poor: An Elusive Populist Fantasy?	p. 417
We Weren't the Bad Guys	p. 427
Sometimes in the Ground Troops, Sometimes in the Leadership	p. 436
The Constant Struggle: The Alabama Movement, 1963-1966	p. 447
There Are No Cowards in My Family	p. 453
Singing for Freedom	p. 460
Bloody Selma	p. 470
Playtime Is Over	p. 473
Captured by the Movement	p. 483
We'll Never Turn Back	p. 503
Letter to My Adolescent Son	p. 514
Black Power. Issues of Continuity, Change, and Personal Identity, 1964-1969	p. 525
Neither Black nor White in a Black-White World	p. 531
I Knew I Wasn't White, but in America What Was I?	p. 540
Time to Get Ready	p. 552
Born Freedom Fighter	p. 572
Postscript: We Who Believe in Freedom	p. 587
Index	p. 593
Illustrations follow pages 84, 156, and 270.
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