THE LIGHT AND SONGS OF FREEDOM: REFLECTIONS ON SNCC’S LEGACY TO BLACK INTERNATIONALISM
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Abstract
What received wisdom has designated “the civil rights movement” in the USA was, for its most active participants a much broader and deeper freedom movement. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, one of the most radical of the 1960s organizations in this movement, had significant subsequent impact on the practice and ideas of black internationalism. The notions of a vector of movement, thought-acts and expanding multiple understandings of freedoms are developed here, illustrated by the work of a group of SNCC-influenced black internationalists at Washington, D.C.’s Center for Black Education and Drum & Spear Bookstore and Press. Many of these concepts and practices were encapsulated in the songs of the Southern Freedom Movement, and the ideas of the civil and human rights organizer Ella Baker, SNCC’s “godmother”. The author’s personal reflections on SNCC are prompted by participation at the 2010 conference marking the 50th anniversary of its founding, as well as in many of the events described.
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