SNCC - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

SNCC Legacy Project Toolkits

Teaching Guides. By the SNCC Legacy Project. 2025.
Six toolkits that are free to download, each with primary documents, narrative history, photos, and discussion questions.

Bernice Johnson Reagon, ¡Presente!

Bernice Johnson Reagon (October 4, 1942 – July 16, 2024) was a song leader, composer, scholar, and activist.

SNCC & Grassroots Organizing: A Black Power Roundtable Discussion

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee veterans Courtland Cox and Jennifer Lawson, and humanities scholars Catherine Adams and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, sat down for a Black Power roundtable discussion.

Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power

Film. Directed by Sam Pollard and Geeta Gandbhir. 2022. 90 minutes.
The story of young SNCC organizers who fought for voting rights and Black power in Lowndes County, Alabama.

Teaching Activity by Directed by Sam Pollard & Geeta Gandbhir

The Young Crusaders: The Untold Story of the Children and Teenagers Who Galvanized the Civil Rights Movement

Book — Non-fiction. By V. P. Franklin. 2021. 328 pages.
This books tells the story of the hundreds of thousands of children and teenagers who engaged in sit-ins, school strikes, boycotts, marches, and demonstrations in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other national civil rights leaders played little or no part.

Teaching Activity by V. P. Franklin

The Way to Freedom: Selma and the Making of a Movement

Film. National Park Service. 2020. 23 minutes.
Documentary about the role of young people in the voting rights movement in Alabama in the 1960s.

We the Resistance (Book cover) published by City Lights 2019

We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Michael G. Long, foreword by Chris Hedges, afterword by Dolores Huerta. 2019. 610 pages.
Encounter the voices of activists sharing instructive stories through narrative and primary documents.

Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 24 pages.
A series of role plays that explore the history and evolution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, including freedom rides and voter registration.

Teaching Activity by Adam Sanchez

Challenging Ourselves: Martin Luther King, the Movement, and Its Lessons for Today

Article. By Charles E. Cobb. 2017.
Charles E. Cobb Jr. discusses the Civil Rights Movement and its lessons, and how they apply to current movements.

Teaching Activity by Charles Cobb

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer

Picture book. By Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrated by Ekua Holmes. 2015. 45 pages.
Illustrated biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, activist for voting and economic rights from Mississippi.

Making of Black Revolutionaries

Book — Non-fiction. By James Forman. 1997. 608 pages.
Detailed description of the Civil Rights Movement by one of the central leaders.

Teaching Activity by James Forman

Lowndes County and the Voting Rights Act

Article. By Hasan Kwame Jeffries.
History and significance of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.

SNCC Digital Gateway

Digital collection. Historical materials, profiles, timeline, map, and stories on SNCC’s voting rights organizing.

To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools

Book — Non-fiction. Edited by William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale. 2015. 176 pages.
A collection and examination of the creative literary work of students published during 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi.

Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s

Book — Non-fiction. Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer. 1991. 692 pages.
Oral histories of the Civil Rights Movement spanning three decades.

On the Road to Voting Rights: Freedom Day in Selma, 1963

Article. By Howard Zinn. Excerpt from Chapter 5 of You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
Howard Zinn’s first-hand account of Selma’s Freedom Day in 1963.

Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt

Book — Non-fiction. By Hasan Kwame Jeffries. 2010. 372 pages.
History of the role that activists in Lowndes County played in spurring Black activists nationwide to fight for civil and human rights in new and more radical ways.

This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

Book — Non-fiction. By Charles E. Cobb Jr. 2015. 328 pages.
Cobb Jr. describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s.

Teaching Activity by Charles Cobb

Victoria Gray and MFDP delegates demonstrating | Zinn Education Project

Sharecroppers Challenge U.S. Apartheid: The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Teaching Activity. By Julian Hipkins III, Deborah Menkart, Sara Evers, and Jenice View.
Role play on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) that introduces students to a vital example of small “d” democracy in action. For grades 7+.

Teaching Activity by Deborah Menkart