Learning Toolkit Resources

Freedom Songs

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around

SNCC Freedom Singers

Ella’s Song

Resistance Revival Chorus

Engage with the Sources: Hear From and About Ella Baker

Ella Baker: Bigger than a Hamburger

Ella Baker’s speech, “Black Women in the Civil Rights Struggle” (1969)

Ella Baker Oral History: “Ella Baker Organizes for Civil Rights” by Ellen Cantarow and Susan Gushee O’Malley

Ella Baker Oral History: “Developing Community Leadership,” taped interview with Gerda Lerner, December 1970

Reflect on the following questions:

What did Baker’s friends and allies emphasize about her and her work?
What does Baker focus on in her own speech and oral history?
How does learning more about Baker help you understand SNCC’s willingness to embrace women’s participation and participation more broadly, regardless of background?

Engage with the Sources: “‘I Just Had a Fire!’ An Interview with Dorie Ladner” excerpt

Consider these questions:

What inspired Dorie Ladner to join the Movement?
What does she emphasize about her experiences

Engage with the Sources: SNCC Position Paper: “Women in the Movement” & “A Kind of Memo” by Mary King and Casey Hayden

SNCC Position Paper: “Women in the Movement,” November 1964

“A Kind of Memo,” Reprinted as “Sex and Case in Liberation, 1966

Reflect on these questions:

What kinds of issues do Mary and Casey raise in the two pieces?
How does their portrait of SNCC compare with what you can learn from other sources?

Engage with the Sources: “SNCC Women and the Stirrings of Feminism” excerpts

Consider these questions:

What do King and Hayden say about why they wrote the two papers?
What do all of the women emphasize about their experiences with SNCC?

Activist Insights Across Generations

Hands on the Freedom Plow Discussion

Conversation with Judy Richardson, Rachel Gilmer, and D’atra Jackson

Bibliography

Blackwell, Unita. Barefootin’: Life Lessons from the Road to Freedom. New York: Crown, 2006.

Cox, Courtland. Interview by Emilye Crosby, July 2, 2012. In Crosby’s possession.

Crosby, Emilye. “’I just had a fire!’ An Interview with Dorie Ann Ladner.” The Southern Quarterly. 52, no. 1 (Fall 2014): 79-110.

Daniels, Carolyn, ” We Just Kept Going,” in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 503-514. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Donaldson, Ivanhoe. Interview by Emilye Crosby, Jan. 10, 2012. In Crosby’s possession.

Harrison, Alisa. “Women and Girls’ Activism in 1960s Southwest Georgia: Rethinking History and Historiography.” In Women Shaping the South: Creating and Confronting Change, edited by Angela Boswell and Judith N. McArthur. 229-58. Columbia. University of Missouri Press, 2006).

Hayden, Casey, “In the Attics of My Mind.” In Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 381-88. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012., 387

Hayden, Casey, and Mary King, “A Kind of Memo.” Judy Richardson Papers, Duke University. Accessed, Jan. 21, 2025. https://repository.duke.edu/dc/richardsonjudy/jrpst002017. Published as “Sex and Caste,” in Liberation (April 1966): 35-36.

Holsaert, Faith, “Resistance U.” In Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 181-94. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Johnson, E. Jeanne Breaker. “It’s Okay to Fight the Status Quo.” In Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 344-48. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

King, Mary, and Casey Hayden. “Position Paper on Women in SNCC,” SNCC Papers, Civil Rights Movement Veterans Archive, accessed, Jan. 23, 2025,
https://www.crmvet.org/docs/snccfem.htm.

King, Mary. In “SNCC Women and the Stirrings of Feminism.” In Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, edited by Cheryl Lynn Greenberg. 127-32. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Ladner, Joyce. In “SNCC Women and the Stirrings of Feminism.” In Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, edited by Cheryl Lynn Greenberg. 139-45. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

Mants, Joann Christian, “We Turned This Upside-Down Country Right Side Up,” in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 128-40. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

McLaurin, Charles. “To Overcome Fear.” Social Action Vertical File. Wisconsin Historical Society. https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/sidital/collection/p15932coll2/id/66912.

Prathia Hall Biography. “This Far By Faith,” PBS website, accessed, Jan. 23, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/prathia_hall.html

Preacely, Peggy Dammond, in “It Was Simply in My Blood,” in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 163-72. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Reagon, Bernice Johnson. “Rubye [sic] Doris Smith Robinson.” In Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary, edited by Barbara Sicherman and Ilene Kantrov. 584-87. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Reagon, Bernice Johnson. Veterans of Hope Pamphlet Series, 1, No. 1. Ed. Vincent G. Harding and Rosemarie Freeney Harding. The Veterans of Hope Project: A Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal. Denver, CO, Iliff School of Theology, 2000.

Reagon, Bernice Johnson, and Dick Cluster. “The Borning Struggle: The Civil Rights Movement: An Interview with Bernice Johnson Reagon,” Radical America 12, no. 6 (1978): 9-26.

Reagon, Bernice Johnson, quoted in How Long, How Long: African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Richardson, Judy, “SNCC: My Enduring ‘Circle of Trust,'” in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 348-66. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Sherrod, Charles, “On Crackers, Cucumbers, and Collards,” Sept. 20, 1962. In The Making of Black Revolutionaries. 275-77. By James Forman. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Sherrod, Shirley. Strong People, Part 3: Strong People. In SNCC Digital Gateway, SNCC Legacy Project and Duke University. Accessed Jan. 20, 2025. https://snccdigital.org/our-voices/strong-people/part-3/.

Smith, Jean Wheeler. In “SNCC Women and the Stirrings of Feminism.” In Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC, edited by Cheryl Lynn Greenberg. 136-39. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

White, Annette Jones, “Finding Form for the Expression of My Discontent,” in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 100-119. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Wood, Myrna, “Ruby Doris,” Bulletin of the New Left Committee Toronto Student Union for Peace Action Nov. 1967. [[publication info]]

Young, Jean Wheeler Smith. “Do Whatever You Are Big Enough to Do.” In Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 240-50. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.

Zellner, Dorothy, “My Real Vocation,” in Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC, edited by Faith Holsaert, et al., 311-26. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.