once in a while those guys may deserve it, but just as i cry foul when people bring up something stupid trent lott said 20 or 30 years ago, i think we ought to be a little restrained in how we retail some of that stuff. >> [inaudible] >> no. >> i mean -- [inaudible] >> yeah, but you know, i mean, you know, i think the guy's had his come comeuppance. you say he's a has been, i say he's a little bit of of a laughing stock. you know, matthew connolly booked fatal misconception, a history of the population control movement by a liberal historian at columbia, and it's absolutely kate -- scathing. came out about two careers ago. i mean, there is nothing left of these people at the end of ha book. and that's why i say at the end of the day, you know, usually

some competent science. the truth wins out on these things. so i didn't say wholly wrong, i just said you want to be careful about that and judicious about it. >> so we have -- go ahead. >> am i on? >> yep. >> i think your question reveals manager that we need -- something that we need to mention if you're going to talk about religion or especially a theological approach to religious, secular or sacred religious tradition. and that is that the judeo yo christian tradition is deeply interested in justice and that the ecological and some of the economists are also interested in justice. but it's not constitutional in their presuppositions whereas judeo yo christian traditions may have dispute t about what is

fair, what is righteous and who's included and so forth, but it's not generally part of the discussion as i've read it in the mainline economists who adhere to the religions that bob has outlined. and with that, if you'll join with me in thanking all of our speakers today. [applause] >> thank you all for coming. >> this event was hosted by the independent institute where robert nelson is a senior fellow. for more information, visit independent.org. >> in the book "hands on the freedom plow," 52 women who were part of the student nonviolent coordinating committee share

their experiences of the civil rights movement. the editors and several contributors to the book present their thoughts at an event hosted by busboys and poets in washington d.c. this program is an hour and 20 minutes. [applause] >> thank you. i have the honor of moderating the panel this evening, and this subject means a great deal to me because in 1964 i was a student at tuskegee university at alabama. and i took a bus ride that changed my life forever. i went from tuskegee to mississippi, to jackson, mississippi, to serve as a volunteer for an effort that snick had, the student nonviolent coordinating committee, had for getting out the vote in jackson, mississippi. i came back, and i eventually became a member of snicc and left school to work full time. so this subject is, indeed, one that niece near and dear --

that's near and dear to my heart. this book, "hands on the freedom plow," is a compilation of the works of many different women, 52 women, who were members of snicc, parts of the movement southern, northern, black, white, latino, latina. there are -- and the book itself has been 15, someone said 16 years in the making. [laughter] and it really has been a labor of love on the part of the people who you see here, some of whom, the majority of whom were editors and some who were contributors to this book. this is the very first time that you've had, we have the assemblage of women's stories from snicc this manner, so this is a very, very meaningful work, and i think that you'll enjoy hearing from the people here. so without further ado, i'd like to get started and, first,

introduce you to jean smith young who's a child psychiatrist practicing in the washington, d.c. area. she's worked with a number of community-oriented mental health programs to address the problems of special populations including children in foster care and mentally ill youth in the juvenile justice system. she's also instructed medical residents as georgetown and howard universities. afy beta phi beta kappa graduate of howard university, the nonviolent action group known as n.a.g., and a published author, jean smith young worked as a field organizer for snicc in southwest georgia and mississippi. and now i'll give the floor over to jean to tell some of her story. >> thank you. [applause] >> okay.

hello? i'm testing this, okay? ♪ we are soldiers in the army. ♪ we've got on our hands on the freedom plow. ♪ but one day we can't fight anymore, we'll have to stand up and fight anyhow. >> so here we are -- [laughter] [applause] i started with that song because i really like it, i but also because it represents the book, "hands on the freedom plow." and a third reason is i wanted to talk about the importance of music and song in the movement. so i want to say -- judy asked me to start first with how did i get there, and the way i got to snicc and to mississippi and georgia was i joined n.a.g. action group in d.c. at howard, and it's for another day to talk

about how wonderful n.a.g. was. but i can tell you that one day i said casualty to stokely carmichael, i said, stokely, i think i'd like to go south. so then the next day -- [laughter] i meet stokely in the middle of the gad rangel while the sororities and fraternities are singing, and so he hands me this ticket to go down to atlanta. so that's how i got to snicc. i get to atlanta, i walk up to this creepy little place -- 8 and a half raymond street. i walk up the stairs and there's nobody there except julian wanders out from the back, and he looks at me. i show him my ticket and he says, oh, i guess you thought someone would be here to greet you. [laughter] nobody to greet me. so anyway, it goes on and on. it's been a wonderful time, and i don't have enough time to talk about how all the great experiences i've had in snicc,

but i want to start here with talking about how i ended up going to philadelphia, mississippi, to work in philadelphia after goodman and swinger were murdered. so i'm going to read from that section of my part of the book. in may of 1964, i hitched a ride north to oxford, ohio, where i found volunteers to be oriented for the massive mississippi summer project. about the third day of the orientation, i was sitting next to judy richardson in the back of western college of women's i auditorium. the hall was medium sized, just large enough to hold the 200 or some solen tears -- volunteers who had come. a wonderful place to be and to sing together. but there were so many people there i couldn't figure it all out, so i ended up turning to scriewdty and sort of connected with judy as partners in, well, what's going to be the next

phase of this? how are we going to manage all these new people joining our organization? in judy and i know each other in a deep, abiding way. we can't even remember when we were introtuesdayed. my sort of union theory about this is there's a special radar system that connects us because of similar events in our lives. we both had the misfortune of losing daring, creative powers early in life and the good fortune of having powerful, intelligent and driive mothers -- driven mothers to carry on. [laughter] both judy and i got these two messages: one, life is tough and you can't depend on any man to take care of you, two, you are very much love, but there'll be no pampering around here. [laughter] that's our start in life. so here we are sitting in the back of this auditorium in oxford trying to figure out what are we going to do with who we are, and bob, moses comes to speak. bob came forward. bob was the architect of the mississippi summer project, and

he came out to explain to the volunteers and to us that this was a big deal. this is a new phase in our work, a new phase in our lives. and that it was dangerous. i didn't listen too closely when he talked because i had kind of gotten used to being scared. i had gotten used to the atmosphere of danger, and i chose it was better not to think about it. so bob went on and on, and we just kind of ignored it. but then something new happened. just as judy and i were sitting there kind of being in the mood, bob was called off stage for a few minutes. when he came back, he was a different guy. bob's body was stiff, and it seemed like he was being pushed forward by four staff members, including his wife, donna. these staff members lined up next to bob as he announced in an unusually hesitant way that three of our people, goodman, shoo whyer and cheney were miss

anything philadelphia and feared dead. dead. i had been moving around mississippi in a chowd of denial thinking that -- cloud of denial thinking that i'd be taken care of. but then the reality hit me, and i was scared. judy next to me was scared. in fact, everybody in the room was scared. and in this silence something bad happened. the room felt cold and empty. it was awful. the fear had made us stop being who we were, stop being our vibrant, hopeful selves. so i turned to judy and said, judy, let's sing. and she said, no, girl, i'm not doing that. [laughter] so then i said, well, we've got to do something. and i still don't know where this song came from, it just came out of the sky or something because i don't know who taught it to me. but in the silence i stood up, and i started walking toward the front of the hall and singing this song that i don't know where it came from, and the song

went -- ♪ i don't know why i have to cry sometime. ♪ i don't know why i have to cry sometime. ♪ it would be a perfect day, but there's trouble all in my way. ♪ i don't know why, but i'll know by and by is. >> and when i got to the front of that auditorium, everybody had learned this song, and everybody was singing, and the mood changed. and everybody stood up and joined, and we were back. we were one again, and we were ready to take on the challenges that we were, that were ahead of us. that was the end of it. after that judy and i went on to separate projects, and later in the summer after it was clear that they were dead i joined the group, the team that would go to philadelphia to work to show that we would not be turned -- that we would not be with run off by this event.

after this orientation bob had, bob made the point -- and this is important historically -- that long ago or several years ago we had made a mistake when we had withdrawn from our position when herbert lee had been killed. so we were all determined to go, to follow his lead and to go to mississippi, go to philadelphia and take our stand. that's my story. okay. prison pleasure [applause] >> betty gartman robinson worked with snicc from 1954-1966. this '70s she move today baltimore -- moved to baltimore and ended as the directer of an hiv/aids study clinic. in 1997 she returned to

community organizing which she continues today. she is the mother of two daughters and has two grandchildren. betty. [applause] >> thanks, jennifer. so how did i get to snicc? i grew up, my parent were working class, they both got a college education, and they joined the middle class. and they were very nervous about their new place in the middle class. and, therefore, they were very worried about -- move it a little bit? okay. they were worried about how would people see them, and so they were very cautious. at the same time, i grew up with kind of a -- i was kind of a fairness person. i was for fairness here and fairness there. i don't know where i got it from, but that's kind of how i saw it then. and then i went to college in upstate new york and the sit-ins happened. and i could not believe that

black students in the south could not eat at lunch counters. there was just something about that that, i couldn't believe it. so i and several other women on my campus organized a support demonstration at wool worth's in the spring of 1960, and that is fs the beginning. it took me, actually, four more years to get to snicc. in the meantime i did northern support organizing and raised money and sent whatever was needed and wrote letters and called congressmen, et. in graduate school at berkeley, i was part of a group -- some of this is in the story too -- i was part of a group of graduate students, and we read about social movements in the u.s. one thing we learned was that the struggle against racism, against institutional racism and the struggle of african-american people had not -- was the one struggle where the energy existed for real fundamental change in the country.

so i left -- and also we talked a lot about the ivory tower and graduate school was the ivory tower and you had to be part of what was happening in the country. so i quit graduate school, never did get a master's degree, and left for snicc. so what i'm going to read is give you a little snapshot of what it might be like. i was young, i was very naive, i have to say, as a young white person growing up in the north with not too much understanding or political education. so i'll just start to read and give you a little snapshot of what it was like. this is, again, summer of '64. in june of 1964 when snicc moved it national office to greenwood, mississippi, for freedom summer i went along. greenwood was a large town by mississippi standard, but there were probably no more than six or seven dozen housings in the negro section because most people lived as sharecroppers on

the plantations. the small frame houses were painted white with green trim and lined up in rows on either side of dirt roads. sometimes there would be a smaller house in the back of the main house. my host and hostess lived in one like this with only three rooms. for the whole summer, they slept on the living room couch and chair giving me the only bedroom. overwhelmed by their generosity, i was respectful but worried for years afterwards that i had not thanked them enough and not had been as conscious of their sacrifice as i should have been. that's the white liberal guilt stuff, right? [laughter] anyway, i'm beyond that. anyway, that was what i was then. [laughter] the snicc office was on the first floor of an old building on avenue n. it had three old wooden desks. i worked the national phone line, it was called the watt line at the time, it's like an

800 number. and we communicated with northern support groups, mobile eyeing them the support what was happening in the south, whatever we needed; contact the press, raise money, send funds for voter registration and freedom schools. we spent many hours typing stencils for the mimeograph machine for anybody else in here who's our age to reproduce the wats line reports detailing all the activities in mississippi on a particular day. judy, dottie -- both of whom are editors of the book -- ed rudd and myself worked around the clock in long shifts with no particular schedule getting 4-6 hours of sleep per day. each week we received a check of $10, really it was $9.64 after taxes -- [laughter] from the atlanta office x that was supposed to purchase all of our essentials. it's where i spent a lot of that money on one regular meal a day at blood's which was an african-american restaurant in

greenwood. however, because all of the greenwood staff of as well as all of our visitor ate at blood's, i am sure -- and he welcomed freedom fighters to his restaurant -- i am sure that he really supported us, ha there were many times that we ate free. here i ate my share of grits, cornbread, fried fish and smothered pork chops. in the mississippi office, our work was protecting the field staff. so leaving the office unattended was something we dared not do lest a call come in reporting a worker had run into trouble. civil rights workers who ventured into mississippi's roads could disappear, be beaten, arrested or even killed for challenging the segregated system. when we heard about an arrest, we called the jail to let them know that we knew they had somebody in custody x then we called the rarely-cooperative fbi. don't believe that film,

"mississippi burning," and the northern contacts for them to start mobilizing, call a demonstration, call the justice department, whatever it was. i'm going to speak this part. my parents called me constantly because they thought that i was duped by commune communists. and, i mean, this is especially relevant today because there were four columnists of the time, fulton louis jr. and roland evans and no advantage, right-wing journalists who repeatedly accused the civil rights movement of being under communist control. so my nervous participants who kind of didn't fit in their middle class shoes, threatened to bring me home and send me to a deprogramming place because they were so convinced i was not in my right mind. paradoxically, my mother sent care packages throughout this period, even included an air conditioner for the greenwood office one summer, i mean, that

summer. on the one hand i was sure my parents knew we were sweltering and sent the air-conditioning out of genuine concern, but i couldn't help wondering if they thought that these gifts would bring me back home and undo the imagined brainwashing. i think i should stop, jennifer. i have a little more, but i think we i should stop because i know we're tight on time. [applause] >> maria varela lives in new mexico and is in a community organizer, writer, photographer and occasional adjunct professor. she worked for snicc from 1963 to 1967 primarily in alabama and mississippi supporting organizers with education alters and photographs. she was invited to northern new mexico in 1968 to help starting a churl cooperatives -- agricultural cooperatives and

community health clinics. in 1990, varela was awarded a macarthur fellowship for her work of organizing mexican-american and native american weavers and sheep growers to preserve their historic cultures and economies. maria varela. [applause] >> i joined snicc reluctantly. i was working for the young christian students which is a liberation theology-based movement of students on college campuses at the time which felt that christianity really had an obligation in terms of dealing with justice and poverty. and because of the times that i was working, '61, '62. we were going -- i was an organizer going by bus from campus to campus exhorting students to support the student nonviolent coordinating committee, to support the sit-in movement, to support the buses,

the freedom rides. and then about, i don't know, probably somewhere in early, late '62 i got a letter from the atlanta snicc office from a friend of mine, casey hayden, saying would i come south to work with her at the snicc office? that's when my so-called values and beliefs really collided with reality. because i did not want to go. and i really sat on that letter for about two or three months and never responded. and sitting in a bunk bed one time up in some catholic college in green pay, wisconsin, i thought to myself, boy, what a hypocrite. you just, you know, sorry, you have to go. so i did that reluctantly, got on the bus, went down to be there by the summer. got diverted to a sort of a summer program for young black kids that were on their own

doing sit-ins in their little rural communities because they were reading about the college students doing it in jet magazine, they were seeing it on television, and they were just doing these spontaneous things and getting the hell beat out of them, getting put in jail. o snicc and the national student association put together a program to help these kids get some strategies and training in nonviolence. while there -- a lot of snicc field people were invited to speak to these kids and be role models for them. and i met frank smith. we had lunch together one afternoon, and he said, so how did you fete here? what'd you do before you came? he got a really kind of intense look on his face which i didn't know what that was about. so the next day i see him huddling with bernard love yet who had just come in from the selma field office who worked for snicc at that point. and then they came over and sat

down with me and said, so, would you consider going to selma? and i said, no. [laughter] they said, well, look, here's the situation. one of the ministers there who is the strongest in the movement is a french canadian priest who was the head of the black catholic parish there. and we need him because he's been the only one to open the churches for voter registration workshops. we cannot lose him. we're baptist, this man is dealing with his archbishop and some of his own parishioners who are not happy with the situation. he needs somebody of his own faith to be there. and so, you know, i just said give me some time to think about it. and, of course, the old catholic guilt thing kicked in again, and there i was on the plane to selma. really all of this is about relationships. i knew i casey and went because she invited me. i didn't know frank and bernard, but they had that faith that i

could do this, and i didn't have faith in myself. but that relationship that we just established in that little short week is what made me do things i would have never done on my own, and i think that's the story of a lot of us through these relationships. so fear was a very large part of me trying to deal with this, and be so i want to kind of go forward and read to you sort of where i was by about 1964. i looked down at the speedometer. it hovered at 115. my 1957 packard hunkered down and propelled the three of us down mississippi interstate 55. franceing to the side i saw the two-toned 1962 chevy with its white occupants try to pass us. again. the barrel of a long gun poked up between the two men in the front seat. it seemed like an eternity since

we left memphis and got on the intertate. earlier that day my companies had left a snicc gathering in tennessee. we were on our way to the mississippi delta. traveling in an integrated car in daylight had left us all a little tense. when we stopped for gas in memphis that evening, i thought that the cover of darkness meant that the worst of the journey was over. then i turned and saw the white male occupants of the chevy staring at us. it was the fall of 1964. open season on civil rights workers. so we got on the interstate, and they chased us. and we were -- the car, this is a packard, eight cylinder, was holding up at 120 miles an hour. and this went on for about 20 minutes, and i just kept hearing my dad say, you know, you shouldn't really speed because you could just blow a rod here. [laughter] dad, get out of my brain.

well, there was a semi in front, so i thought i'm just going to shoot past that semi and park right in front of him while still going because they won't shoot me or us with the truck driver as a witness, i hoped. well, it freaked out the truck driver, and he kind of pulled back. so we hovered close to our guardian semi for about another few miles. the panic welling in my throat was held at bay by my companions' silent composure. if they had fallen apart, we wouldn't have made it. signs to the exit emerged. now the chevy was a six cylinder, so it kind of like make it up those hills. i made the exit with neither truck nor chevy in sight, cut the lights, floated down the exit ramp into welcome darkness. the semi and the chevy roared over us into the night. there was not a word spoken as we continued through batesville

on our way down to the delta. the terror gradually subsided. finally, in small murmurs we dared to believe it was over. i thought that packard company must have been god's chariot maker. terrifying encounters like these became moral to those of us working in the movement who were new to the south. they had been normal for generations of those born and raised under southern u.s. apartheid. as civil rights workers, we had to be prepared to walk the killing fields. we learned a variety of responses to danger, sometimes to fade into the background assuming local accent and dress, those of us who could, sometimes to emotionally play dead in the hopes that the stalker would just lose interest, sometimes to do something so bold as to catch them off balance, enabling flight. we learned how to overcome the paralysis of fear and develop finely-tuned survival senses we never knew we had. [applause] ..

and 412 years, she has taught various courses and african-american history at wayne state university, the university of toledo and the university of michigan. she has also remained involved in community programs including antihunger and tutorial programs. during several periods of her

adult life, she has also been a full-time homemaker, raising three sons and caring for her aging parents. [applause] >> good evening. i was born in providence, rhode island and when i was around six years old, my parents moved from a white neighborhood that was rarely indifferent to our presence to one that was downright hostile. the reason for the move was that my father, an optometrist, was losing his sight. my parents decided to close his office and brought a funeral parlor that allowed them to rent out the upstairs living quarters and keep an office at the front of -- front of the house until my father could no longer practice. our new neighbors met us with taunts, stone throws to the windows, the local motorcycle gang regularly congregated at the front of our house.

when someone tried to set the house on fire and another time my father and i were told at gunpoint to leave the area. i spent most of my school years, in all white setting, experiencing that combination of petty meanness, isolation, being ignored and excluded that came with what we have been called representing the race. i could never be sure teacher would recognize my upheld hand or that my classmates might resort to the n word or even physical violence. there is a kind of fear and carefulness that comes with being in this kind of position. from the time i entered college at the university of michigan in the fall of 1961, we were receiving fairly constant movement news and visits from movement activists, including curtis hayes, who came up to describe organizing efforts in the calm mississippi in the fall

of 1961 and tom hayden, who came up that winter fresh from an albany georgia jail. in the spring of 1962 hayden invited a group of us to attend a sncc conference in chapel hill north carolina. interspersed with the freedom songs and stories of readings and jailing sncc cost about the notion of radically democratic organizing and how the southern freedom movement could liberalize the country as a whole, especially the southern black people voting who could defeat the conservative southern congressman who held a stranglehold on the senate and congressional committee. i was drawn in emotionally by being around people like myself who were for the most part black, political and very radical. further, i was convinced that the organizing philosophies and strategies i have heard about in chapel hill just might work.

i made plans to go south but my parents who had lived apart for two years so that i could attend my mothers elma motter as an in-state student would not hear of it. so i continue to do support work for the movement and waited until i turned 18 and went south in the summer of 1963. throughout my time in the south and albany georgia and greenwood mississippi and selma alabama i was always afraid. not much happened to me directly, still a feared being the victim of the deadly and excessive brutality visited on black people in the south and particularly on the other movement workers. buying paper downtown and greenwood one day in the summer of 1963, i noticed a white man being greeted warmly by everyone as he made his way down the sidewalk across from us. all i asked, is that the mayor? know my companion replied, that

is the man who just shot and killed medgar evers. along with several -- other civil rights workers we worked tapping the places where this or that meeting or murder took place, including people like reverend green, paella and sammy young. my time in the south did expose me to the most brutal aspects of the southern racism. two days into the orientation at the beginning of the summer, i learned that a black girl in their early teens from the nearby county had been raped by 13 white men. line was a man who had left his truck parked in front of the young woman's house during the ordeal. she died of infection resulting from this attack. later that summer i went to campus outside greenwood at a plantation that looked as if it had been plucked from a history book, big white columns main

house and off to the back and aside a row of small unpainted cabins. some on stilts, a common type of structure in the south. near the end of our time there i went into one of those houses on stilts. inside there was a small central stove and hardly any furniture. i found myself talking with a young woman who was my age and had a fretful baby. is that they be not feeling well i asked. no, she answer. i think my baby has pneumonia for the third time. oh i said, chitchatting, you know, what did the doctors say? i didn't go to the doctor this time she replied. the boss man would not allow it. i had already gone twice this year, but the baby is really sick this time. my sense was that she accepted her baby would die in it wasn't anything she could do about it. overwhelmed i left and went

around to the back of her house and threw up. my head spinning from this reality and filled with thoughts of generations of black babies denied such basic care and their mother's pain. just as with the sumpter county rape i gained a deeper understanding of the realities of racism and it gives me great sorrow to know that this kind of scenario is still common in our communities here and all over the world, where black mothers lose their children to hunger, preventable disease and unnecessary violence. i gained tremendous respect for the courage and resilience of the black people living in these communities, who maintained decency and dignity facing these kinds of conditions on a regular basis. my respect grew tenfold as they joined them when they thought for freedom at the highest and deepest level, risking everything on the chance that some change could be made.

whenever i was canvassing in those black communities in the south, when i was asking the simple question, would you like to try to register to vote or come to such and such meeting, the unspoken understanding was, of course, we know that you could lose your job, go to jail, get eaten up, your house might be bombed and ultimately you might lose your life. there were people, thousands of them, who actually answered yes to these terms and that is what made up the civil rights movement. and that movement did win the vote and legal segregation and greatly tempered white southern terrorism and it also liberalized america in ways that we could not imagine. freeing black people across the country from shame, shame, say it loud i am black and i'm proud bringing black studies which led to check on the studies native american studies and so on. softening the ground and serving

as a training camp for the women's movement, the student movement and even advocating the human rights apply to all people including prisoners. i had hoped that one legacy of them movement would be that my children would not have to live their lives burdened with the kind of fear and carefulness that accompany being a member of an oppressed race. this desire was not fulfilled however. by the time our middle son reached high school-age living in the detroit area turned out to be dangerous, especially for young black men. our son was attacked by the police, held up by armed robbers and present at random shootings, and arrested. we all got used to hearing repeated gunfire every weekend. what has been the most difficult was accompanying our son to the funerals of their contemporaries and children of our friends, knowing that racism was the root cause of these deaths and that there was no consolation for the

slaying. i look forward to a day when our communities can be safe and secure places for young and old alike. when our children will be attending excellent public schools and their parents will have jobs and adequate housing and will share the abundance society has to offer. you might say i am a dreamer, but i know i am not the only one. in the 60s, we attacked a prison of oppression and we felt the walls give way and there were openings made. now, we must hear these walls down completely here and abroad. there is a song we used to sing in the movement with sky and candy and to make it non-gender specific. just my hands can't carry prison down. just your hands can't carry prison down, but if two and two and 50 make a million, we will see that day, round. we will see that day, round.

[applause] 's be joan trumpauer mulholland grow up across the river in arlington. she graduated from tupelo college in mississippi in 1964. then she returned to arlington and worked in d.c. for the federal government. next came in marriage and children. she retired after 30 years working in arlington, elementary schools. [applause] 's been out today when there is a bus boys and poets in arlington it may not seem like the south, but let me tell you a few things i remember from the 40s, 50s and even the 60s. i remember that when the trolley cars from washington d.c. to

virginia had stopped and blacks had to move to the back. i remember and white army in arlington was fire bombed because it invited over a black army officer. i remember clan meeting posters on telephone poles in arlington. i remember my mother locking the car doors when we drove through a black neighborhood and telling my sister and me not to look at the people and the cars stops next to us at the lights, because they were. i remember and those discussions might grandfather in georgia about whether or not a particular lynching system was guilty of a crime but none about whether lynching was right or wrong. and i remember the first and last names of my childhood friends and neighbors, betty k. row sitting here, but only the

first names of the blacks who worked with us. i never knew their last names. now, for what i have written for the book. some excerpts. i am southern and white, as southern as the red clay of georgia, as southern as lee's mansion overlooking the potomac, northern virginia is where i live, rural georgiou was down-home. my grandmother used to say, the only foreigner we ever had in the family was a yankee. [laughter] as a teenager, that meant my father. as a teenager witnessing virginia's campaign of massive resistance, a court-ordered school the segregation, i knew something was terribly wrong in the south, both as a christian and as a southerner. i felt that when i had a chance to do something and change things i could do it.

we southerners needed to put our own house in order. when i was a student at duke university and durum north carolina in 1960, my chance came with the sit-ins. a few other white students and i joined the black north carolina college students at the lunch counters and in the jails. the repercussions were such that i dropped out of duke at the end of the year and returned to the washington d.c. area. there i had an office job and participated in the local movement led by the non-violent group, nag, an affiliate of snicks based at howard university. and my particular contribution to the book is a diary i kept about the freedom ride. the next freedom ride turned bloody and the students mobilize to keep the rights going. nag members had kidded hank thomas that he was taking a vacation when he left on the right but then the news photos

of him stunned and bleeding anderson alabama appeared among southern students, nag was second only to knoxville in supplying freedom riders. in early june of 1961 i was in a group that flew from d.c. to new orleans to catch the train to gaston. during the two weeks when i was in the hynes county jail, i kept a diary, right here, hidden in the hem of my checkered skirt which is covered by heavy crochet and ruffles. i crumpled and re-crumpled the pages to keep them concealed in my skirt. expectations of a shakedown and dwindling papers contributed to an increasingly abbreviated writing style. day one, june 8. there were four cops and four --

the place was pretty claimed like yellow and comparatively cool since it is in the basement. the toilets partially stops, the shower school which is good. shortly before lights go out the store comes. two cardboard boxes with cigarettes, candy bars, paper and envelopes. we had supposed to have anything to read or anything glass. however we were able to bring in everything we were carrying from our bags. birdie, regular prisoner in the cell next to us, gets along with one of the trustees and he brings the paper nearly every day. things can be passed fairly easily from one cell to the next the boys are upstairs and a windows would be close but we could hear them sing. day too. last night they brought around paper.

jane made hers into an airplane. lunch, cornbread, kidney be greens in an afternoon to more female freedom riders joined us on the floor. they are from up north, they came down with two white lawyers and one girl pat who is in the next-door cell by training. there was a rainstorm with much much thunder and water so we closed the windows high up and hard to close. i slept a good deal this afternoon and read some of my book on gandhi and i finish it while i was in that jail. dinner, potatoes, gravy, fish and cornbread. day three. i woke up as they were bringing in breakfast. no salt and a cold drifted this morning. three prunes and three biscuits. the biscuits were better than yesterday. one girl from each cell got to get close. no opportunity to make phonecalls yet. the boys stayed, group of

specially selected outstanding students who were brought into jackson to study government. the boys stayed came by, about 45 of them. our first reaction was laughter. den wisecracks. they got real uneasy. after they went on to other cells we decided we could be more dignified. when they came back the same two verses of we shall overcome and then a chorus and third verse. someone whistled in that almost broke us up but we made it through. almost a sin is the lights went out the singing started until about 11:00. the boys would sing and we would sing and of man named charles a nun freedom writer has a beautiful voice and sang several solos. someone sang, how great thou art for betty, regular prisoner. one guy answered back a little and everyone sang louder. we quit around 11:00. does one of the most uplifting experiences i have ever had.

day for. the jailer said when we asked, we couldn't make phonecalls and we couldn't call the lawyer because of our singing, way past midnight. however we can see the lawyer if he comes to cs. real nice. we are singing again tonight. when we started putting up the mast a lot of of the stuffing fell out so we dumped it in the hall in protest. dinner, three tough biscuits a tiny piece of bacon and molasses. we find out we are on the fourth floor. the jailers had a total of 17 more arrested. surprise, they turned out the lights at 9:00. we sang some more but they left -- on and we couldn't hear. bobby a trustee says they are trying to send us to the pen, parchment. some girl cried, please mr. kennedy. day seven. many girls state delegates

toured. i've made a side. attention to her is, i am not a yankee. i am from georgia. the guards took it, upset. much selling and writing and talk of new york, food and songs. by the time i get out i will know how a minority feels. actually one other southern white girl was eventually arrested so i had company. day 14. usual break. exercise and ballet, a little read and write. so many, 17 in the cell before, not much piece. haven't slept well the last two nights. meeting on what to do with cigarettes, no rationing. people taken to sleeping in the shower -- our trip. jailers getting worse. drunk taken out this morning.

letters may be rationed, wrote letters in red, long day. dinner, long evening, dance, burning charge of. lights out early. boy calls that 10 more were arrested. [applause] >> faith holsaert lives and their ham, south carolina. she's a teacher and fiction writer and has remained active in thespian and antiwar justice struggles. [applause] >> so isn't it beautiful? [applause] i am going to turn 70 years old in 2013 and i have never been happier in my life. as i am after this book has

finally come out. i was raised by two mothers in greenwich village in new york city. my mother by birth was eunice spelman holsaert. i feel like this mic is not on. can people hear me? who is jewish and five my mother by affection, charity abigail bailey who is african-american. during the course of that childhood we spent a year in haiti and as a household of four women, because i have a sister as well, much less our racial composition we were quite noteworthy. in this childhood, i was schooled to accept and be proud of my otherness from the rest of conventional 1950s, 1940s, 1950s united states and i was also schooled to speak truth to

power, as they say, and to be frightened by that but also to accept that this is something i had to do. one of the things that i found fascinating working on this book as an editor was that many of the white women, not all, but many of them, perhaps most had had prior experiences of crossing cultural boundaries and head -- many of us had experiences do not with race and racism, which for most people, white people in the united states was not particularly true, particularly in the 1950s. the other thing that all of us in the look or most of us regardless of race shared was some sort of social or political at the fest experience. my experience, aside from living in a household which in itself

was a political statement, although that is not why we live together, was in high school i was very active with something called the harlem brotherhood group, which was connected with the national conference of christians and jewish. i think i saw ivan houck a man and i've been also experience with ncc today and i think with harlem brotherhood group. so, for christmas of 1961, i was at school at our nerd and i received a phonecall and went on a sit-in in the eastern store of maryland and one of the people who was arrested with me is also here tonight, reggie robinson. peggy down in priestly who is in the book was one of the people

also who was arrested and angela butler as well so there were three of us that were arrested in a relatively small group all of whom are in the book. at the age of 19, in the autumn of 1962, i went south to register voters in southwest georgia and was therefore a year year. i returned partly because in connection with a stay in the jail in albany georgia i caught hepatitis and what i would like to say is the experience in the south really altered many things for me, among other things that altered my blood chemistry and a way that was pretty serious. so i'm going to read just a little bit from the time when i am in -- excuse me, southwest georgia. the autumn that i was in southwest georgia was, just happen to be the same time as

the cuban missile crisis and so i want to read a couple of sentences about that. in contrast to the movement uplifting music, in october i heard u.s. bombers roar overheas turner air force base to patrols leaving white segregationists like sheriff matthews to go marauding in terrell county. and so i had this experience of government sending these planes took patrol cuba from the air force base in the town where i was working, where many of us were working and yes the federal government's position with respect to our safety and even as voting registration workers, which meant we were federally protected, was that they were

helpless to protect us and yet these bombers went over daily. but, to go back to a little bit what it was like in the movement, one of the things that struck me, although i had often also been afraid in my childhood has my house was also attacked, although not quite in such a dire way as martha's, where the stories of terror that were told to us or were told in the south and in the old days had kept people in their place, and that is what i'm going to read about a little bit. we were told the story of jane fraser. years before in bad baker county, and by the way that baker is the county where shirley sherrod came from, that years before in bed baker county, fraser had him beaten to

death and jailed. mr. paige, who was an albany movement officer, went to pick up the body for the funeral home when he lifted the body, and mr. paige told me this story, fraser's broken bones clicked like dice. the u.s. commission on civil rights lifted frazier's death as the last recorded lynching in the u.s.. that was 1963, so there have been more, sadly. there were other southwest georgia cautionary tales. there was a lynching tree in lee county, where four men and one woman had been lynched in one day. in baker county, black people weren't supposed to drive through towns after sunset. white merchants in bed baker

would sell only rc cola, not coke or pepsi, two black customers. wide? i don't know but i do understand the oppression of that, but one night penny patch, another white volunteer, and i were alone in the dark freedom house. from outside an intruder smashed smash the window beside our bed. we crouched on the floor while through the curtain, he ran his hand over our beds, groping through the litter of shattered glass, trying to reach us. we called the police, but that man, like many who attacked the movement, was never arrested. everywhere the rural crossroads of southwest georgia were points of power.

white men owned the land adjacent to major crossroads and at night, they guarded those intersections. but we drove past the lynching tree and east through those intersections on our way to mass meetings. in tarot, lee and eventually sumpter county's. intends on fights of earned churches and the charred rubble of segregation, the black south, sheltered a movement that was participatory, black led and integrated. the movement lives the future in a peanut fields of the past. opposing racism, sexism and elitism. in those pants i understood two things, that i would become a teacher and that as byard reston rustin said, adding planning

meeting for the 1963 march on washington, demanding racial justice in the united states in 1963 and perhaps now was inherently revolutionary. thank you. [applause] >> judy richardson was on the snake staff from 1963 to 1966 in cambridge maryland in the national office in atlanta and greenwood mississippi during the 1964 freedom summer in southwest georgia and lowndes county alabama. her experiences continue to influence her work as a documentary filmmaker. she worked on "eyes on the prize," and several other films and was teacher workshops, social justice organizations and as a movement writer and lecturer.

[applause] 's been out all of you all think we are sitting here. we are looking really calm, right? let me just say we saw this book for the first time five days ago. be screened. we look like we are just normal and this is just a normal thing. we have been working on this book for 15 years, right? we are so happy and we are so happy. [applause] we are so happy to be sharing this with so many of our sncc brothers and sisters so i would like you all and i'm not going to ask you to stand up because we have been sitting here for a while but anybody who worked with sncc, worked with sncc put your hands up. alright, sncc is in the house. [applause] now, the other thing to remember is that we look a little bit older now, our right? just to remember that we were

all 17, 18, 19 years old at the time so one of the things we hope will happen with this book and the 52 women who talk about their stories is that young people, young men, young women of all stripes, shades everything, that they will see themselves in our stories because we were not exceptional. they will see themselves and they will see that they can do it too. is about stepping out and you don't know whether you are going to succeed but you have got to do it because if you do nothing, nothing changes. now, what i'm going to say is talk about very quickly i grew up in perry county are. this is the home of the author washington irving so i went to washington irving junior high school and effort of team was the headless horseman. go horseman go. my mother was a homemaker. my father worked in the plant which is where everybody i news father worked and that was the chevrolet plant.

he helped organize the union, the united auto workers local and he was treasurer of that uaw local win, the point that i was seven years old, he died on the assembly line. okay, fast-forward, 1962-63, in a good quaker college in pennsylvania. i was on a full four-year scholarship which is really important. they were trying to increase the african-american enrollment that point because out of i think something like almost 900 students they were bringing in this magnum group of black students, for boys than for girls, eight of us and presumably it was boys and girls club that we wouldn't have to intermingle too much with the outside. now what i found though was that there was on campus, on the campus a student for democratic society chapter. now at ses, the students for democratic society was a group of progressive pie merrily white

northern students and they were very supportive of the work that was coming out of the student sit-ins and what we were doing in sncc. so this sds chapter was doing a lot of good work actually trying to equalize, trying to increase salaries of the all-black cafeteria staff including me because i was work-study, so that was happening in cafeterias. they were doing work in chester pennsylvania but they were also organizing busloads of buses. that does not make any sense. busloads of students to go to cambridge maryland. on the eastern shore of maryland. now, i decide to get on one of these buses and i don't do it because i am in any way committed. it is because my mother is not there to stop me. and so i get there and what i find is that there is this amazing strong local leader, gloria richardson, yes indeed,

obviously no relation to me and she is another one of the contributors to our book. i also find this is a sncc project, student non-violent coordinating committee so the little hole organizers had requested sncc assistance so i finished my freshman year and then i decide i'm going to take off the next semester would be the first semester of my sophomore year to work with sncc i assume that it was going to be just six months and that is a whole other question about how my mother takes it, but anyway so i've decided six months. who knows and it turns into three years. what i'm going to do is read a little bit from my chapter and it is called sncc, my enduring circle of trust. a lot of sncc people were recognized as. eyes of the national office of sncc for the first time in november 1963. it was a tiny rundown office at

a point for every mistreat a one block side street off hunter street now martin luther king boulevard. dear the atlanta university center. the office was located on the second floor above us beauty shop. it definitely did not fit my image of the national office. you know i think i'm coming in and there will be rugs on the floor. oh please. i was 19 in atlanta with reggie robinson, who is here, sncc's secretary in cambridge maryland where i'd been working full-time at sophomore college. from the downstairs glass door of the national office i saw this large man at the top of the stairs, dressed in overalls and sleeping -- sweeping the stairs. reggie saw him too. he ran up the stairs and with broad smiles and much hollering they hugged each other like long-lost brothers and i thought whoa, this is truly an egalitarian office. since i assumed that meant to be the janitor. it was only after reggie called

the man's name that i realized this was jim forman, sncc's larger-than-life executive secretary. there was such joy, warmth and affection in this moment that i thought judy you have been just joined an organization, you have joined a family. sncc really is a band of brothersbrothers, and you know sisters too and a circle of trust and i assumed i would be in the rest of my life. now, and later found out that four men often swept up and not so much to clean the perpetually dirty office which he was not all that good at. rather he was showing us as he often said, no job was to lowly for anyone in sncc to do in every job was important in sustaining the organization. reggie introduced us and for questioning forman found out i had taken a semester off of swarthmore and that i could take shorthand, which is kind of like texting but with symbols. [laughter]

i know there is another generation here. and i could type 90 words a minute and i never made a bad to swarthmore. let me just say without that i did not take any offense to that then nor do i now. i had a birdseye view of the organization and away i would never have had otherwise and i was nurtured as much by the man as i was by the women. i was forced to do some stuff i never thought i could do, but nobody ever said you can't do that. you have never done it before. always there was a pushing to do more than you thought you could ever do and it opened up the world to me. it wasn't just like bette talking about. i'm finding out about anti-colonial struggles in africa and southeast asia, in south america. i would never have found that if i had come. i saw the world and it changed

my entire worldview and i thought i would be in this for the rest of my life, so thank you. [applause] >> now we would like to open it up for questions and if you have a question for a specific panelists, that is absolutely fine or if you have a question just directed to any panelist. yes, and there is a microphone here, so please, because we are recording this, we would appreciate it if you would use the microphone. >> i would like to congratulate you on this book. i would like to congratulate you on an excellent look, a book that ties right into the rest of the literature of sncc and we can get the rest of those books by simply getting in contact with sncc's 50th anniversary because that reading list fits perfectly. on november the sixth, there would be another movement book

release called citizen -- at us poison poets. politics and prose. [laughter] hey look, this is america. i am free. on october the 24th there is going to be another great book release called count them one by one, the history of the justice department sending the district court of appeals trying him in hattiesburg. art the a question for you. please tell us about the panel that you have assembled at the university of southern mississippi on the 24th. >> my name is lawrence and i grew up with these great women. [applause] >> okay, please. martha. there is a panel at the university of southern mississippi, october 21 and

22nd. and reverend cecil gray, the son of victoria gray at arms, who lives in baltimore, will be reading from his mother's piece. genie breaker who worked for sncc will also be there. doris derby, who worked in mississippi for nine years, and maryland low one from new york. these are all women in the book. >> microphone please. >> i just wanted to mention that what is wonderful is that a lot of us have been organizing book events in our areas and so if you go on to the university of illinois site and you click on

hands on the freedom file you will see a calendar of all those events and as much as possible we have tried to involve independent bookstores, just a real plug. we have got to support teaching for change bookstore. [applause] they are amazing. try not to buy it on amazon. fight through teaching through change. some of us remember when we had the bookstore, which jennifer and i and others here, we are part of it right up the street. what got us in was when november tamela started underselling us at cost. do not let that happen to teaching for change. okay, we won't. all right. >> on behalf of her. >> get really close to the microphone, sorry. so everyone can hear you. >> on behalf of my wife i am

asking -- you can't hear me. all right, i have got it. [inaudible] my wife wants me to ask where is diane nash and what is she up to we don't hear much about her. >> she is in the book. >> okay. >> she is in the book and we just had a panel at the association for the study of african-american african-american life and history and she was on that panel. she lives in chicago. she has continued to be an activist and a proponent of nonviolence red faction, and what else do you want to know? >> okay, thanks. >> the first part of the question was where is diane nash so that was the information. i just want to add for people

who don't necessarily know what that may mean, diane nash was one of the leaders of the nashville sit in movement which successfully desegregated nashville. she was the first of the sudan activist to go and work full-time for the movement and she was the first female secretary for sncc and later she also worked for sdlc. >> thank you. first of all good evening. for all you ladies who were former members of sncc, i am not that much younger than you all but i can never thank you enough for all of your contributions. i know i wouldn't be you today as an organizer as an activist had it not been for you and the ladies who could not be here this evening. thank you again. [applause] it was a great privilege and

blessing for me. i went to the conference you all had earlier this year, and i met some of you and shook your hands all because i was so excited so again thank you. my question to all of you, did any of you know or work with sister shirley sherrod and brother charles sherrod back in the day? also i just found out a few weeks ago there is another book coming out about the movement called the dark end of the street. it is about rosa parks and other women who were active in anti-rave pork that i never have heard of before, so again thank you very much and if you can talk about other things you all are doing. thank you in god bless you. >> i did not know joy sherrod. she was the prosecutor in southwest georgia and i was trying to think of a sherrod story. i cannot come up with one quick. faith might have a sherrod

story. >> you can make your way to that microphone. >> i worked with charles sherrod the year that i was in southwest georgia. he was one of the 12 or 13, whatever it was, who became the original band of sncc field secretaries. the two things i would like to mention about sherrod have to do with the role of women, and the first is, when i arrived from greenwich village a little bit full of myself from my harlem organizing, he said very seriously, faith i want you to learn how to drive. i felt like -- i was 19. i felt like i had better things to do with my life as an organizer than to learn to drive a car. he said every soldier in my army

must drive a car. now, that actually didn't come to pass but that was because of segregation. that is another story. he also insisted, and this i appreciate. a little bit you are seeing some of the benefits tonight. he insisted that i learned to speak publicly in front of a crowd because every soldier in the army etc., etc. etc. whether she was a woman are not must learn to speak in public. but the combination of that particular story is that probably the second or third month that i was in southwest georgia was the first anniversary of the albany georgia movement, which is the first time that hundreds of people have gone to jail in the fight against segregation, and there were so many people in jail in albany in november of 1960 -- 1961, that they had to

ship people to surrounding counties because there was no room in the jails. so we have this anniversary. dr. king was coming to town to speak, etc. etc. so it was a big deal. charlie sherrod selected our coworker, pray theo hall, a woman to the speech and oh my goodness. it had never occurred to me that a woman could preach, but she could preach and even more importantly in terms of who charlie sherrod is, he himself was a baptist minister. any of us who have ever heard him speak now that. there is no reason why he couldn't have just said that he would take the stage that night, but he gave it to her to all of our benefit. should i tell do we shall overcome story? >> we have time for only one more question are going now that many of you had purchased the book and if you haven't already

purchased it is available at the teaching for change bookstop right here at busboys and poets. if you would like to have your book signed by the women on the panel or one of the women on the panel, we will be leaving the room here because there is another event here, but you can either remain here in busboys and poets or you can go across the street. some of us will be going across the street to eatonville. there is space at eatonville where you can meet the authors, meet the editors and then have your book signed there. eatonville is directly across the street. so now for our final question, and then also a quick wrap-up from our panelists. >> my name is leah adams and first i want to thank you all for the work that you did and for the work that you have just completed after 16 years.

congratulations. some of my greatest heroes, some of the people i have admired most in my life came out of the sncc and a lot of movements came out of sncc besides the movement to free african-americans in the south. most of these movements have seen some success. the women's movement, the movement, the peace movement. there is a movement that was born in sncc that has not seen the same success and it is one that is very dear to my heart. i would like to know if any of you have continued in the path of people like marion barry, ivan donaldson, ellen or holmes norton, to try to free d.c. and if so when it is going to happen? [applause] >> i just want to say that i worked in d.c. after i left the

south are going to work actually with marion and the sncc office in d.c. and we were very active and the statehood issue, and i have carried that. i lipton baltimore now for 38 years but every time i think about d.c. and i hear a little snippet like a herd vincent gray was elected or he won the primary and people were saying, this is great because benson gray was a supporter of d.c. statehood. i am always interpreting data and telling people in my community that is an important struggle. i'm really glad you raised it. >> i want to thank all of you for coming this evening and this now brings our meeting to a close but i just want to say, is there anything that anyone from our panel would like to say? okay, judy. , on up here. >> i just wanted to say there is one person.

there are five editors on this panel. one is missing and that is dotti zelmer. i feel a -- real bad because she she -- i just want to acknowledge one other person because it was the first children's book waiver published and that is mrs. eloise greenfield and she is sitting right over there. [applause] >> for more about this book, visit press.u illinois.edu and search "hands on the freedom plow."

>> hugh hope where did you get the title "dining with al qaeda"? >> was better than eating chinese with al qaeda which apparently some people thought might be cannibalistic so there is an episode in the book one chapter where i'm in riyadh and soon after the february 11 i was sitting down with a missionary from the al qaeda camp where most of the saudi's who were the canon fodder on the truck here in washington had then, and the dinner was starting off with him saying i'm going to kill you. i speak arabic if that helps, and after half an hour i am convinced -- convince him that i am wanting to hear his story. in those days you could still be innocent in the middle east, and wanted to know about the way he

thought. americans believe that most people had normal lives back then. that is my book, tried to humanize the middle east. not to justify terrorism but to explain what the context is. >> how would you say you hooked up with him in riyadh? >> as usual these things are quite random. i had a friend who gave me a contact and driving to the outskirts of town, suddenly someone comes into view and i was lucky. i was with "the wall street journal" and danny pearl. something more like an ambush but not much different from that and danny had his head cut off so i feel very lucky that i got a way to tell the story. >> and what did you learn from your contact? >> i think they learned that the reason that he wanted to kill me at the start of the interview

was that he believed that i wanted to kill him and that is the key thing. you have got to remember and most complex, it always feels much more when you receive the the -- then when you give it and that is the main lesson. when america is conducting to let terry all over the middle east and drones, we should be aware that is really felt quite deeply by the people there and it is not just what is being felt in america. >> hugh hope are you still in contact with anyone associated with al qaeda? >> no. the book is partly the reason that i gave it up. it was 25 years of journalism and after the iraq war, which i was the only correspondent for my newspaper going to baghdad and trying to explain to americans why the war was pointless, i'm found and what

loeb in their face literally. nothing was taken seriously at all, and finding that actually journalism yes it makes a difference and i'm happy i was a journalist for a long time, but ultimately i couldn't go on with the old system in the middle east. i have a british passport and we have done a little damage in the middle east. i work for "the wall street journal" which vehemently supports this pointless war and i'm going to the middle east saying talk to me, tell me your story and it will make a difference. that was the old deal and i felt it did make a difference in the past and then i stopped believing it would make a difference. i resigned and was lucky enough to join the international crisis group, a conflict resolution ngo and i'm feeling a lot more happy in my work now. >> hugh hope is the author of hugh hope -- "dining with al qaeda" three decades exploring the many worlds of the middle east. thank you, sir.

according to the author, each american american discards approximately 197 pounds of food per year. even while many face rising growth costs and shortages are being reported at food tanks across the country. jonathan bloom discusses his book at regulator bookshop in durham north carolina. the program is close to an hour. [applause] ..