SNCC 50th Anniversary Legacy Conference (The 38 video volume collection)

The complete set of 38 videos from the SNCC 50th Anniversary Conference can only be licensed through Alexander Street Press or purchased on DVD directly from California Newsreel ($25.00 per volume or $750.00 for all 38). Please note DVDs are not closed captioned. Call to inquire. 

This collection of 38 video volumes present formal addresses, panel discussions and programs that took place at a conference and reunion unfolding over four days in 2010 at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

SNCC emerged from student protests that erupted on February 1, 1960, when four Black college students from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro launched a historic sit-in at a Woolworth's department store lunch counter. This daring action sparked a wave of similar challenges to segregation by thousands of students across the South. On the weekend of April 15, 1960, student leaders from the sit-ins gathered at Shaw University, and SNCC was born. Soon, students in the newly formed organization began leaving school to commit themselves to the organization.

The early SNCC organizers were inspired and guided by Ella Baker who organized Southern NAACP branches in the 1940s and helped organize Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. Using money appropriated by Rev. King, Baker helped to organize SNCC’s founding conference at Shaw University. The 50th-anniversary conference was dedicated to her legacy.

SNCC’s history of sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and protests of segregation in public spaces is well documented. But because structural pieces of SNCC’s story remain lesser-known to the public, an important component of the 50th-anniversary conference was to begin the vital job of telling the complete, grassroots story of the organization.

This collection provides a complete record of every panel and plenary session at the 50th conference. They are unique not only in their comprehensiveness, but also because they feature an unprecedented number of SNCC veterans publically examining their Movement experiences. Many of these veterans are not usually encountered in the Civil Rights Movement canon. In short, the history contained in these volumes are informed by a special and valuable sensibility available nowhere else. Moreover, these discussions are reinforced with the participation of some of academia's most thoughtful scholars of the Southern Freedom Movement.

This material offers a unique, in-depth examination of what took place in the Southern freedom struggle. And while SNCC veterans may again gather for reflective conversations in the future, the unprecedented attendance of this historic gathering makes this collection an invaluable resource for scholars and students alike. 

VOLUMES

1. Opening Plenary
2. Early Student Movement Philosophy and Activism
3. From Student Activists to Field Organizers
4. SNCC Builds an Organization
5. The Raleigh Civil Rights Movement
6. Luncheon Keynote: Rev. James Lawson, "We Have Not Yet Arrived"
7. The Societal Response to SNCC
8. Up South: "We Raised Money, We Raised Hell"
9. More Than a Hamburger
10. Moving on Mississippi: "We Had to be Strong"
11. Alabama: "Turning to Ourselves"
12. Southwest Georgia: "Do You Want to be Free"
13. Arkansas, Cambridge, MD, Danville, VA: "Everybody Say Freedom"
14. The Impact and Influence of SNCC on American Society 1960 to 1968
15. What Was SNCC? How Did It Evolve Over the Years? Why Did It Cease to Exist?
16. Political Impact of SNCC 1964 to 1984
17. Luncheon Keynote: Harry Belafonte, "Why Can't Our Children Find Us?"
18. Ella Baker's Roots: "Give People Light and They will Find a Way"
19. Depictions of the Movement in Popular Culture
20. Black Power, Black Education and Pan Africanism
21. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party: "A Real Democratic Process"
22. Women Leaders and Organizers: "You Can Do This"
23. The Black Church and Black Struggle
24. Highlander, SSOC and Organizing in the White Community: "We Knew That We Were Not Free"
25. SNCC and the Black Arts Movement: "We Had to Change the Conversation"
26. Plenary: Joyce Ladner
27. SNCC Children Speak
28. Luncheon Keynote: Congressman John Lewis, "Stand Up and Make Some Noise"
29. Luncheon Keynote: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, "The Nation's in Your Debt"
30. The Young People's Project: "Come Let Us Build a New World"
31. The Cradle to Prison Pipeline
32. Actions for a New World
33. Special Program: Dick Gregory, "They're Asking Different Questions Today"
34. Plenary: In Remembrance of Ella Baker, Howard Zinn, and James Forman
35. Dinner Keynote: Danny Glover, "The Real Costs Lie Ahead"
36. Freedom Concert
37. Plenary: Bob Moses, "We the People"
38. Closing Program: Bernice Johnson Reagon, "Solidarity of Past, Present and Future"