The 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee

FAIN: RZ-255733-17

Center for Documentary Studies (Durham, NC 27705-4854)
Wesley Hogan (Project Director: December 2016 to October 2022)
William H. Chafe (Co Project Director: January 2017 to October 2022)

The collection of oral histories, to be archived in a digital repository and interpreted in a scholarly book, of the work done by field workers of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee towards the expansion of voting rights in the 1960s. (24 months)

A central idea legitimizing U.S. democracy is that of “one person, one vote.” Though laid out in the country’s Constitution as “We the people,” it is far less clear how that ideal came to practical fruition nearly two centuries later in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This project seeks to generate a new perspective on that pivotal moment, providing, in the process, a more precise and useful interpretative framework for understanding the civic activism of the broader civil rights movement. It pioneers a very different model than anything done before—active collaboration to create new scholarship between archivists, scholars, and those who “made” the history within the freedom movement.

Associated Products

The 1965 Voting Rights Act (Web Resource)
Title: The 1965 Voting Rights Act
Author: Wesley Hogan
Abstract: SNCC focused on voter registration and on mounting a systemic challenge to the white supremacy that governed the country’s entrenched political, economic and social structures.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: http://snccdigital.org

Electoral Prowess: Black Women (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Electoral Prowess: Black Women
Writer: Ajamu Dillahunt Holloway, Sunny Osment, Amelia Hayes, Rebekah Barber, and Aaron Keane
Director: Danita Mason-Hogans
Producer: Rebekah Barber, Arthur Braswell, Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, Amelia Hayes, Wesley Hogan, Sunny Osment
Abstract: Lively examination of the role of African American women in the voting rights movement from the 1960s through today.
Date: 10/30/19
Primary URL: http://snccdigital.org/resources/podcasts/
Access Model: open access
Format: Web

When You’re Hungry and Need Something to Eat : Building Power (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: When You’re Hungry and Need Something to Eat : Building Power
Writer: Ajamu Dillahunt Holloway, Sunny Osment, Amelia Hayes, and Rebekah Barber
Director: Danita Mason-Hogans
Producer: Rebekah Barber, Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, Amelia Hayes, Wesley Hogan, Sunny Osment, and Tim Tyson
Abstract: Ballots make budgets. The role of the vote in grassroots democracy.
Date: 11/15/19
Primary URL: http://snccdigital.org/resources/podcasts/
Access Model: open access
Format: Web

Keeping the Story Before Us : HBCUs and Voting Power (Radio/Audio Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Keeping the Story Before Us : HBCUs and Voting Power
Writer: Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, Sunny Osment, Amelia Hayes, and Rebekah Barber
Director: Danita Mason-Hogans
Producer: Rebekah Barber, Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, Amelia Hayes, Wesley Hogan, Sunny Osment, Tim Tyson
Abstract: Intergenerational organizing for the vote, and the role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in building and sustaining citizens for democratic life.
Date: 12/16/19
Primary URL: http://snccdigital.org/resources/podcasts/
Access Model: open access
Format: Web

Cultural Memory as Social Justice: The Critical Oral History Methodology (Article)
Title: Cultural Memory as Social Justice: The Critical Oral History Methodology
Author: Geri Augusto, Danita Mason-Hogans, Wesley Hogan
Abstract: In any social justice movement, many people who are involved typically feel unheard and disrespected by larger societal institutions — they often feel that their opinions and voices do not matter, or that their reasons for participating in struggle are distorted. Since academic institutions are a part of a greater power structure, these perceptions hold true when collecting and documenting history in grassroots communities as well. Critical oral history offers a useful tool to employ a true collaborative process that upends the traditional unequal approach to building historical archives of civil and cultural work. The process provides an opportunity to open the floodgates of trust which, inevitably, leads to more accurate information and a greater understanding of societal evolution and mutual understanding. As one of our partners in Brazil said after seeing a presentation on the method, “this takes the idea of ‘popular education’ [a concept developed by Brazilian Paulo Freire] and applies it to building community archives.”
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://intersections.ilamembers.org/member-benefit-access/interface/grassroots-leadership/interface-grassroots-leadership-index
Primary URL Description: International Leadership Association website
Access Model: subscription online
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: The Grassroots Leadership & the Arts for Social Change Corner at the International Leadership Association
Publisher: Interface: The International Leadership Association Newsletter

Why the Way We Tell Stories and Document History is a Social Justice Issue (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Why the Way We Tell Stories and Document History is a Social Justice Issue
Abstract: "Until lions have historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter." Historian Danita Mason-Hogans advocates that the way we tell and document history is a social justice issue. She shares her family and community's multi-generation involvement in the civil rights movement, and how the importance of who tells a historical story and from who's perspective they are told, is as important as the story itself. Danita Mason-Hogans is a Civil Right Activist and Historian. Appointed by Mayor Pam Hemminger, she serves on the Chapel Hill Historic Rights Commemorations Task Force and works as Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies Program Manger for their critical oral histories component. Danita Mason-Hogans is the daughter of Dave Mason, who began the famous first sit-in of Chapel Hill’s civil rights’ movement, igniting decade of protests against segregation.
Author: Danita Mason-Hogans
Date: 04/12/19
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
Primary URL: http://www.ted.com/talks/danita_mason_hogan_why_the_way_we_tell_stories_and_document_history_is_a_social_justice_issue
Primary URL Description: TED

Dealing with Power (Web Resource)
Title: Dealing with Power
Author: Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University
Abstract: Selections from the June 2018 critical oral history session at Duke University focusing on the Mississippi Movement for voting rights.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://snccdigital.org/our-voices/dealing-with-power/
Primary URL Description: Conference video selections.

Adapting Critical Oral History Methodology to Freedom Movement Studies (Article)
Title: Adapting Critical Oral History Methodology to Freedom Movement Studies
Author: Geri Augusto
Author: Wesley Hogan
Author: Danita Mason-Hogans
Abstract: In the 1980s and 1990s, scholars James Blight and janet Lang created a methodology, called critical oral history (COH), as part of their investigation of the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. This article explores how our team of freedom movement veterans and scholars adapted the COH methodology during six years of experimentation between 2015-2021, as we drove for a deeper understanding of the US civil rights/Black Power freedom movement. We examine what part of the COH worked, what did not, and what innovations emerged.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www-tandfonline-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/doi/full/10.1080/00940798.2022.2096473
Primary URL Description: Link to the article on the Critical Oral History method
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Oral History Review
Publisher: Oral History Review

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