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Hands on the Freedom Plow

Hands on the Freedom Plow

Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC

Edited by Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, Judy Richardson, Betty Garman Robinson, Jean Smith Young and Dorothy M. Zellner

Published by: University of Illinois Press

Imprint: University of Illinois Press

27 black and white photographs

Digital download
9780252098871
Published: September 2010

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Contents
Authors
Praise

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."

Title Page

Contents

Introduction

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

Part 2. Entering Troubled Waters: Sit-ins, the Founding of SNCC, and the Freedom Rides, 1960–1963

What We Were Talking about Was Our Future - Angeline Butler

An Official Observer - Constance Curry

Onto Open Ground - Casey Hayden

Two Variations on Nonviolence - Mildred Forman Page

A Young Communist Joins SNCC - Debbie Amis Bell

Watching, Waiting, and Resisting - Hellen O’Neal-McCray

Diary of a Freedom Rider - Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

They Are the Ones Who Got Scared - Diane Nash

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

We Turned This Upside-Down Country Right Side Up - Joann Christian Mants

Everybody Called Me “Teach" - McCree L. Harris

I Love to Sing - Rutha Mae Harris

Since I Laid My Burden Down - Bernice Johnson Reagon

We Just Kept Going - Carolyn Daniels

Part 4. Standing Tall: The Southwest Georgia Movement, 1962–1963

It Was Simply in My Blood - Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely

Freedom-Faith - Prathia Hall

Resistance U - Faith S. Holsaert

Caught in the Middle - Cathy Cade

Part 5. Get on Board: The Mississippi Movement through the Atlantic City Challenge, 1961–1964

Standing Up for Our Beliefs - Joyce Ladner

Inside and Outside of Two Worlds - Jeannette King

They Didn’t Know the Power of Women - Victoria Gray Adams

Do Whatever You Are Big Enough to Do - Jean Smith Young

Depending on Ourselves - Muriel Tillinghast

A Grand Romantic Notion - Denise Nicholas

If We Must Die - Janet Jemmott Moses

Part 6. Cambridge, Maryland: The Movement under Attack, 1961–1964

The Energy of the People Passing through Me - Gloria Richardson Dandridge

Part 7. A Sense of Family: The National SNCC Office, 1960–1964

Peek around the Mountain - Joanne Grant

My Real Vocation - Dorothy M. Zellner

A SNCC Blue Book - Jane Bond Moore

Getting Out the News - Mary E. King

It’s Okay to Fight the Status Quo - E. Jeanne Breaker Johnson

SNCC: My Enduring “Circle of Trust” - Judy Richardson

Working in the Eye of the Social Movement Storm - Betty Garman Robinson

In the Attics of My Mind - Casey Hayden

Building a New World - Barbara Jones Omolade

Part 8. Fighting Another Day: The Mississippi Movement after Atlantic City, 1964–1966

A Simple Question - Margaret Herring

The Mississippi Cotton Vote - Penny Patch

The Freedom Struggle Was the Flame - Elaine DeLott Baker

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

Part 9. The Constant Struggle: The Alabama Movement, 1963–1966

There Are No Cowards in My Family - Annie Pearl Avery

Singing for Freedom - Bettie Mae Fikes

Bloody Selma - Prathia Hall

Playtime Is Over - Fay Bellamy Powell

Captured by the Movement - Martha Prescod Norman Noonan

We’ll Never Turn Back - Gloria House

Letter to My Adolescent Son - Jean Wiley

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

I Knew I Wasn’t White, but in America What Was I? - Marilyn Lowen

Time to Get Ready - Maria Varela

Born Freedom Fighter - Gwen Patton

Postscript: We Who Believe in Freedom

Index