Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Review of "Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC"

African American History Book Review

Title--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
Publisher—University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago and Springfield, 2010

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

This is a long awaited book that examines the history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the civil rights and black power movements from the perspective of the women who played such a pivotal and vital role in shaping African American and United States history during the 1960s. The book is structured around both the personal development of the women who wrote submissions and the transformation of political consciousness within these movements as a whole.

There are fifty-two women contributors to the book who are natives of the north and the south, who are urban, rural, African American, white and Latina. Some of the women represented came from northern urban areas to join the civil rights struggle as well as those who were born, bred, educated and shaped by the south and its segregated system of exploitation and oppression against black people.

All of the women who edited and contributed to “Hands on the Freedom Plow” worked with SNCC, the pioneering and militant civil rights and later black power organization that was formed out of the sit-ins that swept the south in the winter and spring months of 1960. These personal accounts span the entire history of the organization from 1960-1970.

Although the participants worked within the same organization and have maintained contacts throughout the years since the 1960s, their perspectives and recollections of historical developments are sometimes in conflict. SNCC was heavily rooted within the African American communities of the rural south and their educational institutions, yet the impact of the organization’s work influenced a whole generation of white youth who while working in the civil rights movement gained the necessary experience to move in other directions involving community organizing in white areas as well as within northern urban settings.

The book begins with the personal account of political transformation and consciousness of Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons (aka Gwendolyn Robinson) from Memphis who went from a secure African American family and community to experiencing racism and segregation when she sought to find summer employment in Tennessee’s largest city. An incident on a bus where she refused to move to the back fueled her determination to end segregation.

After winning a scholarship to the prestigious historically black women’s college of Spelman, Simmons recounted how SNCC would send recruiters to campus. She remembers SNCC “had some really effective recruiters. One of the best was Willie Ricks, sometimes called ‘Reverend Ricks.’ He’d stand on the campus in his blue-jean overalls (the SNCC uniform) and talk about how the SNCC folk were making history while we studied it.” (Little Memphis Girl, p. 15)

Simmons then joins SNCC, begins wearing her hair natural and while joining demonstrations against segregation and racism in Atlanta. By 1964, she would volunteer for the Mississippi Summer Project and face the dangers of other civil rights workers who organized the Freedom Democratic Party and registered thousands to vote for the first time since Reconstruction.

One of the interesting contributors to the book from the northern United States was Debbie Amos Bell, whose parents were members of the Communist Party. Bell in the section entitled “A Young Communist Joins SNCC,” attended the founding conference of the student organization in Raleigh in April 1960 at the aegis of the Party.

She remembers that “The most appealing quality of SNCC for me was that it gave its field-workers plenty of latitude to establish their own style of work to accomplish the stated goals of the organization. Strategy and tactics were collectively discussed, but the individual field secretary had plenty of room to exploit his or her talents.” (p. 60)

Bell continues by noting that “Women were generally accepted for their intelligence as well as their organizational skills. At the same time, it was not unusual for me to participate in a meeting dominated by men where it was impossible to interject a word.”

The book reveals how the escalation of the struggle from civil rights to black power and revolution that was formerly ushered in with the election of Stokely Carmichael as Chair in 1966, brought even more repression from the federal government and local authorities. In 1966 and 1967, the federal authorities filed criminal charges against numerous male members of SNCC and placed tremendous strains on the organization as a whole.

In 1970, two leading organizers, Ralph Featherstone and William H. (Che) Payne were killed in an explosion that blew them to bits in their automobile in the state of Maryland. It was during this time that former SNCC Chair H. Rap Brown, now known as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, and a current political prisoner in the federal system, was waiting to stand trial on trumped up charges stemming from the 1967 rebellions.

These developments along with other ideological and political differences led to the demise of the organization. However, the authors illustrate that fierce activism continued among most of the SNCC women activists. They have served their time well in other community, national and international organizations. Many have worked as community organizers, intellectuals and religious figures.

This book makes a significant mark on the body of literature that recounts the often hidden history of the civil rights and black power movements of the 1960s. The fact that the book was written and compiled by the actual participants in the struggle gives it an authenticity that is sometimes lacking in other texts.

Young activists of the 21st Century will be well served in obtaining and studying this first-hand account of one of the most significant periods in United States history.

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