Contents
Introduction
1
Part 1
Fighting for My Rights: One SNCC Woman’s
Experience, 1961–1964
From Little Memphis Girl to Mississippi Amazon
Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons aka Gwendolyn Robinson
7
9
Part 2
Entering Troubled Waters: Sit-ins, the Founding of SNCC,
and the Freedom Rides, 1960–1963
33
What We Were Talking about Was Our Future
Angeline Butler
39
An Official Observer
Constance Curry
45
Onto Open Ground
Casey Hayden
49
Two Variations on Nonviolence
Mildred Forman Page
53
A Young Communist Joins SNCC
Debbie Amis Bell
55
Watching, Waiting, and Resisting
Hellen O’Neal-McCray
61
Diary of a Freedom Rider
Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
67
They Are the Ones Who Got Scared
Diane Nash
76
Part 3
Movement Leaning Posts: The Heart and Soul of the
Southwest Georgia Movement, 1961–1963
Ripe for the Picking
Janie Culbreth Rambeau
Finding Form for the Expression of My Discontent
Annette Jones White
Uncovered and Without Shelter, I Joined This
Movement for Freedom
Bernice Johnson Reagon
85
91
100
119
We Turned This Upside-Down Country Right Side Up
Joann Christian Mants
128
Everybody Called Me “Teach”
McCree L. Harris
140
I Love to Sing
Rutha Mae Harris
144
Since I Laid My Burden Down
Bernice Johnson Reagon
146
We Just Kept Going
Carolyn Daniels
152
Part 4
Standing Tall: The Southwest Georgia Movement, 1962–1963
157
It Was Simply in My Blood
Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
163
Freedom-Faith
Prathia Hall
172
Resistance U
Faith S. Holsaert
181
Caught in the Middle
Cathy Cade
195
Part 5
Get on Board: The Mississippi Movement through
the Atlantic City Challenge, 1961–1964
211
Standing Up for Our Beliefs
Joyce Ladner
217
Inside and Outside of Two Worlds
Jeannette King
223
They Didn’t Know the Power of Women
Victoria Gray Adams
230
Do Whatever You Are Big Enough to Do
Jean Smith Young
240
Depending on Ourselves
Muriel Tillinghast
250
A Grand Romantic Notion
Denise Nicholas
257
If We Must Die
Janet Jemmott Moses
266
Part 6
Cambridge, Maryland: The Movement under Attack, 1961–1964
The Energy of the People Passing through Me
Gloria Richardson Dandridge
271
273
Part 7
A Sense of Family: The National SNCC Office, 1960–1964
299
Peek around the Mountain
Joanne Grant
303
My Real Vocation
Dorothy M. Zellner
311
A SNCC Blue Book
Jane Bond Moore
326
Getting Out the News
Mary E. King
332
It’s Okay to Fight the Status Quo
E. Jeanne Breaker Johnson
344
SNCC: My Enduring “Circle of Trust”
Judy Richardson
348
Working in the Eye of the Social Movement Storm
Betty Garman Robinson
366
In the Attics of My Mind
Casey Hayden
381
Building a New World
Barbara Jones Omolade
388
Part 8
Fighting Another Day: The Mississippi Movement
after Atlantic City, 1964–1966
395
A Simple Question
Margaret Herring
399
The Mississippi Cotton Vote
Penny Patch
403
The Freedom Struggle Was the Flame
Elaine DeLott Baker
409
An Interracial Alliance of the Poor:
An Elusive Populist Fantasy?
Emmie Schrader Adams
We Weren’t the Bad Guys
Barbara Brandt
Sometimes in the Ground Troops, Sometimes
in the Leadership
Doris A. Derby
417
427
436
Part 9
The Constant Struggle: The Alabama Movement, 1963–1966
There Are No Cowards in My Family
Annie Pearl Avery
447
453
Singing for Freedom
Bettie Mae Fikes
460
Bloody Selma
Prathia Hall
470
Playtime Is Over
Fay Bellamy Powell
473
Captured by the Movement
Martha Prescod Norman Noonan
483
We’ll Never Turn Back
Gloria House
503
Letter to My Adolescent Son
Jean Wiley
514
Part 10
Black Power: Issues of Continuity, Change,
and Personal Identity, 1964–1969
Neither Black nor White in a Black-White World
Elizabeth (Betita) Sutherland Martinez
525
531
I Knew I Wasn’t White, but in America What Was I?
Marilyn Lowen
540
Time to Get Ready
Maria Varela
552
Born Freedom Fighter
Gwen Patton
572
Postscript: We Who Believe in Freedom
587
Index
593
Illustrations follow pages 84, 156, and 270.