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<h1 id="reader-title">The Hidden History of the SNCC Research
Department<br>
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<div id="reader-estimated-time">May 2, 2017 - By <a
href="https://news.littlesis.org/author/derek/"
title="Posts by Derek Seidman" class="author url fn"
rel="author">Derek Seidman</a></div>
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<p><em>“AT LAST!! THE PAPER YOU HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING
FOR!! WHAT IS THE SNCC RESEARCH DEPARTMENT……” </em></p>
<p>This was the headline of a <a
href="http://www.crmvet.org/docs/65_sncc_research.pdf">February
1965 circular</a>, typed and mimeographed, that went
around to chapters of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee — or SNCC, as it commonly went by
— across the US.</p>
<p>SNCC may have been the most important organization of
the postwar civil rights movement. It grew out of the
wave of sit-ins in 1960 and was guided initially by Ella
Baker, the foundational organizer whose emphasis on
bottom-up organizing and democracy deeply shaped SNCC’s
vision and methods. Its members were on the frontlines
of the struggle to dismantle southern Jim Crow,
organizing everything from the <a
href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/freedomriders/">Freedom
Rides</a> to the <a
href="http://www.blackpast.org/aah/albany-movement-1961-1962">Albany
Movement</a> to the <a
href="http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav%3DN:4294963828-4294963805%26dsRecordDetails%3DR:CS3707">Mississippi
Freedom Summer</a>. SNCC members took the movement
into the most dangerous areas of the deep South, where
white supremacy was most deeply entrenched. They worked
to educate and empower ordinary people, and also
register them to vote.</p>
<p>But few people today know that SNCC had a Research
Department that interacted with organizers on the ground
to help guide the group’s strategy and actions. Indeed,
as the 1965 memo pointed out, even some SNCC organizers
were unaware that they had a research office with a vast
archive of news clippings, weeklies, reference books,
and other documents that could offer insight into the
larger workings of the power structures that were
upholding racist oppression in the Jim Crow South.</p>
<p>“Research can support field operations in several
ways,” the circular announced to members. Researchers
and the stored archives could be useful to SNCC’s
Freedom Schools, speakers’ tours, investigations into
racial discrimination by businesses, surveys of new
areas to organize — even into analyzing the
possibilities of organizing a new political party. The
announcement asked organizers to make use of the
Research Department, send in any requests, and even
entertained the possibility of setting up state-by-state
research hubs.</p>
<p>What the history of the SNCC Research Department shows
is the dynamic ways that research and organizing can go
hand in hand, working together, to shape strategy and
fight effectively for freedom and justice.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The SNCC Research Department formally began in 1962,
when SNCC Executive Secretary James Forman recruited
researcher <a
href="https://snccdigital.org/people/jack-minnis/">Jack
Minnis</a> to the organization to help develop its
research wing.</p>
<p>This was just two years after the wave of sit-ins in
the spring of 1960, and SNCC had blossomed into a large
organization that was at the forefront of the civil
rights movements. The group was spread across the South,
from Georgia to Mississippi, and organizing to empower
people, desegregate institutions and spaces, and
register voters. Some felt that a research department of
the group was needed to help inform the campaigns of an
ever-expanding organization.</p>
<p>Minnis was a researcher who helped popularize power
research in the 1960s with a pamphlet called “<a
href="http://www.crmvet.org/docs/65_minnis_power-r.pdf">The
Caring and Feeding of Power Structures</a>,” which
drew on the experiences of SNCC. He also produced a
four-page newsletter called “<a
href="http://www.crmvet.org/docs/lwl/lwl35.pdf">Life
With Lyndon in the Great Society</a>” that showed the
corporate ties behind the Johnson administration.</p>
<p>By 1963, SNCC had formed an active <a
href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/sncc-national-office/research/">Research
Department</a> that assembled a huge documentary
archive and produced research that informed the group’s
campaigns. The SNCC Research Department focused on power
analysis to reveal the elite structures that were
funding and underpinning Jim Crow. Researchers provided
information to field staff to help their organizing
campaigns.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>But research was not a top-down process in SNCC.
Rather, organizers and researchers worked closely with
each other as a larger, collective unit. Organizers
shaped and did research, and researchers informed and
participated in organizing. Everyone was in constant
interaction with each other.</p>
<p>A few examples illustrate this interplay between
research and organizing, as well as the range of
important ways that research helped aid SNCC’s work. As
organizers sought to expand the movement, researchers
provided information to field staff to help their
campaigns.</p>
<p>For example, they put together a pamphlet, “<a
href="http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC4a_MSPowerStructure.htm">The
Mississippi Power Structure</a>,” that analyzed how
big money — from cotton farms, northern capital, oil
companies, electric power, and finance capital — was
invested in the state and how it related to political
power and class and racial hierarchies. The document
also illustrated how white elites pitted poor whites
against poor blacks in Mississippi so they could more
easily exploit both groups.</p>
<p>Among other things, the pamphlet analyzed corporate
power’s connection to the state’s white supremacist
political rule. The pamphlet showed, for example, how
Mississippi’s biggest electric company and two biggest
banks had overlapping leaders who were also leaders of
the White Citizens’ Council that dominated the
Democratic Party, the state’s ruling party. SNCC named
names and mapped out the ties between these different
entities to reveal the flow and interlocks of corporate,
racist, and political power in the state.</p>
<p>For example, one powerful figure — William P. McMullan
— was a director of the electric company as well as
chairman, CEO, and a director of one of the two banks.
McMullan was also a board member of the Jackson White
Citizens’ Council, which had major influence over
Mississippi politics, police, and the courts.
Information like this gave organizers a larger and more
strategic sense of their targets and the bigger system
they were taking on.</p>
<p>In addition to power analysis like this, the Research
Department put together other landmarks of SNCC
literature that aided major campaigns. One example was “<a
href="http://www.crmvet.org/docs/sncc_ms_violence.pdf">A
Chronology of Violence and Intimidation in Mississippi
Since 1961</a>,” a detailed timeline of white
supremacist violence and police intimidation in
Mississippi that was prepared for the 1964 Freedom
Summer.</p>
<p>The pamphlet documented in week-to-week, day-to-day
detail the everyday racist coercion against African
Americans and civil rights organizers in Mississippi.
With the only text being captions for images and
timeline entries, the pamphlet began:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“January 1, Greenville, Washington County: Two
young white men rode a motorbike through a
residential area and, according to the local police
chief, fired a volley of shots Into a group of
Negroes. George Mayfield, 18, was seriously wounded
In both legs; Percy Lee Simmons, 19, was shot in the
right leg.” </em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The pamphlet proceeded for 15 more pages with
single-spaced, two-column text entries that documented
incidents all the way up to the beginning of 1964. The
findings of the “Chronology” were also published in
Congressional Record on April 4th, 1963.</p>
<p>Judy Richardson was a<a
href="http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/judy-richardson-41">
SNCC organizer</a> who worked in the group’s national
office in Atlanta and then Mississippi. She believed
that the pamphlet helped to convey the systemic,
blanketing nature of racist violence in Mississippi.
“What it proved,” she <a
href="http://www.crmvet.org/mem/minnis.htm">recalled</a>,
“was that white violence was long-standing and endemic
[and] not just the problem of a few racist rednecks.”</p>
<p>In <em>Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by
Women in SNCC</em>, Richardson also <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id%3DElLgCgAAQBAJ%26pg%3DPA355%26lpg%3DPA355%26dq%3Din%2Bfrom%2Bthe%2Bfield%2Bto%2Bshare%2Binformation%2Band%2Balso%2Bto%2Bget%2Bsome%2BR%2Band%2BR%25E2%2580%25A6%2BMost%2Bwere%2Beighteen-%2Band%2Bnineteen-year%2Bold%2Bwomen%2Band%2Bmen,%2Bmainly%2BAfrican%2BAmerican,%2Bsharing%2Borganizing%2Bproblems,%2Bdiscussing%2Bpossible%2Bsolutions,%2Band%2Brequesting%2Bresearch%2Bfrom%2BJack%2BMinnis,%2Bour%2Bcrusty%2Band%2Brather%2Benigmatic%2Bwhite%2Bresearch%2Bdirector.%2BWith%2BJack%25E2%2580%2599s%2Bresearch,%2BSNCC%2Bfolks%2Bwent%2Binto%2Bnew%2Bcommunities%2Barmed%2Bwith%2BU.S.%2BCensus%2Bdata%2Band%2Bother%2Binformation%2Bindicating%2Bthe%2Bnumb%26source%3Dbl%26ots%3DSXp7HEfzoK%26sig%3D8msINKQhjuvVj6DQIUmaXd6Cw5M%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ved%3D0ahUKEwi3sICxsbbTAhVrwYMKHYppBf0Q6AEIJTAA%23v%3Donepage%26q%3Din%2520from%2520the%2520field%2520to%2520share%2520information%2520and%2520also%2520to%2520get%2520some%2520R%2520and%2520R%25E2%2580%25A6%2520Most%2520were%2520eighteen-%2520and%2520nineteen-year%2520old%2520women%2520and%2520men%252C%2520mainly%2520African%2520American%252C%2520sharing%2520organizing%2520problems%252C%2520discussing%2520possible%2520solutions%252C%2520and%2520requesting%2520research%2520from%2520Jack%2520Minnis%252C%2520our%2520crusty%2520and%2520rather%2520enigmatic%2520white%2520research%2520director.%2520With%2520Jack%25E2%2580%2599s%2520research%252C%2520SNCC%2520folks%2520went%2520into%2520new%2520communities%2520armed%2520with%2520U.S.%2520Census%2520data%2520and%2520other%2520information%2520indicating%2520the%2520numb%26f%3Dfalse">recalled</a>
the dynamic relationship between research and organizing
in SNCC:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“Then there would be these national staff
meetings. Every five months or so, all our staff
would come in from the field to share information
and also to get some R and R… Most were eighteen-
and nineteen-year old women and men, mainly African
American, sharing organizing problems, discussing
possible solutions, and requesting research from
Jack Minnis, our crusty and rather enigmatic white
research director. With Jack’s research, SNCC folks
went into new communities armed with U.S. Census
data and other information indicating the number of
registered black voters, if any; the levels of
poverty; the discrepancy between federal funding of
African Americans as compared to white farmers from
programs like the Agricultural Stabilization and
Conservation Services (ASCS); and the main
industries in the area — and all this before the
advent of computers. Our discussions also included
references to both the national and international
events that were swirling around us.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The SNCC Research Department was also called upon to
look into possibilities and strategies for new political
projects. For example, some know about the effort by
Stokely Carmichael to help start the <a
href="https://snccdigital.org/events/lowndes-county-freedom-organization-founded/">Lowndes
County Freedom Organization</a> (LCFO) in Lowndes
County, Alabama in 1965. But fewer people probably know
that the LFCO was in part made possible by the research
efforts of the SNCC Research Department and the ways it
worked with SNCC organizers to bring those findings to
life.</p>
<p>By 1965, civil rights organizers were registering black
voters by the thousands in Alabama, but the only
existing political parties were dominated by whites. In
response, SNCC staff, working with local community
organizers in Lowndes County, Alabama, started to
entertain the idea of forming an independent black
political party.</p>
<p>That fall, Stokely contacted the SNCC Research
Department about the idea. Researchers proceeded to mine
through twelve volumes of Reconstruction-era law books
to find an “<a
href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/sncc-national-office/research/">obscure
statute</a>” that would allow for the formation of a
new political party.</p>
<p>In his memoir, James Foreman <a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id%3DY2RIhBEy7dEC%26pg%3DPA443%26lpg%3DPA443%26dq%3D%2522jack%2Bminnis,%2Bhead%2Bof%2Bsncc%2527s%2Bresearch%2Bdepartment,%2Bdiscovered%2Ba%2Blittle%2522%26source%3Dbl%26ots%3DkS2yy7jdxx%26sig%3DVuVpkULDGD9quJH3b5vIfjbotNk%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ved%3D0ahUKEwjhyYWtrbbTAhVj44MKHZPnBIAQ6AEIJTAA%23v%3Donepage%26q%3D%2522jack%2520minnis%252C%2520head%2520of%2520sncc%2527s%2520research%2520department%252C%2520discovered%2520a%2520little%2522%26f%3Dfalse">recalled</a>
the formation of LFCO, and the dynamic, collective
process through which research informed organizing and
organizing gave life to research:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“Jack Minnis, head of SNCC’s research department,
discovered a little-known Alabama law that made it
possible for independent political organizations to
be formed and run candidates for office under
conditions that were technically not difficult to
meet. This legal loophole opened the door for the
creation later that year of the Lowndes County
Freedom Organization, with the black panther as its
symbol. Minnis held a number of workshops to explain
the whole process. The Alabama people in the Freedom
Organization acquired a better understanding of what
they were doing, and why, than any other political
group that we had thus far developed. A tremendous
excitement and new hope began to flow as the black
men and women of Lowndes County moved to shake off a
hundred years of white supremacy.”</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1967, Minnis also wrote a history of how the LCFO
was formed, called “<a
href="http://www.crmvet.org/docs/67_lcfo_minnis.pdf">The
Story of the Development of an Independent Political
Movement on the County Level</a>.”</p>
<p>An important lesson from these accounts is the way that
the SNCC Research Department produced research that was
connected to and concretely aided a living, breathing
initiative on the ground by SNCC grassroots organizers.
The Research Department conducted workshops with dozens
of organizers to help them master the legal statute for
running for office with a new political organization.
SNCC Researchers also put together informational flyers
and “<a
href="http://www.crmvet.org/docs/67_lcfo_minnis.pdf">picture-stories</a>”
for mass distribution throughout Lowndes County.</p>
<p>In this way — though a combined effort of research and
organizing, melded together towards a common goal — the
LFCO was able to take off.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The history of the SNCC Research Department is an
important example of how one of the great social
movements of the past used power research to inform its
strategies, tactics, and targets.</p>
<p>Years after the height of SNCC’s activity, Julian Bond
<a
href="https://books.google.com/books?id%3DY2RIhBEy7dEC%26pg%3DPR12%26lpg%3DPR12%26dq%3D%2522had%2Bthe%2Bbest%2Bresearch%2Barm%2Bof%2Bany%2Bcivil%2Brights%2Borganization%2Bbefore%2Bor%2Bsince.%2BField%2Bsecretaries%2Bentered%2Bthe%2Brural,%2Bsmall-town%2BSouth%2Barmed%2Bwith%2Bevidence%2Bof%2Bwho%2Bcontrolled%2Band%2Bowned%2Bwhat,%2Band%2Bwho,%2Bin%2Btu%2522%26source%3Dbl%26ots%3DkS2yq9nauw%26sig%3DmZopGG9dC7TmU9kwNi3mQ4sK8_4%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ved%3D0ahUKEwj1kNGl4Z_TAhXJrVQKHV76DbsQ6AEIIzAA%23v%3Donepage%26q%3D%2522had%2520the%2520best%2520research%2520arm%2520of%2520any%2520civil%2520rights%2520organization%2520before%2520or%2520since.%2520Field%2520secretaries%2520entered%2520the%2520rural%252C%2520small-town%2520South%2520armed%2520with%2520evidence%2520of%2520who%2520controlled%2520and%2520owned%2520what%252C%2520and%2520who%252C%2520in%2520tu%2522%26f%3Dfalse">reflected</a>
on the group’s Research Department:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“[SNCC] had the best research arm of any civil
rights organization before or since. Field
secretaries entered the rural, small-town South
armed with evidence of who controlled and owned
what, and who, in turn, owned them. ‘Power
structure’ was no abstract phrase for SNCC’s band of
brothers and sisters, but a real list with real
people’s names and addresses and descriptions of
assets and interlocking directorships, demonstrating
how large interests, ranging from Memphis and New
York banks to the Queen of England, might own at
least partial control of a plantation in
Mississippi’s Delta. Knowledge of who owned what was
crucial to SNCC’s strategies. From it, we knew that
Southern peonage was no accident, but rather the
deliberate result of economic policies determined
thousands of miles away from the cotton field.” </em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>As movements today try to make sense of the complex
ways that power works, the SNCC Research Department can
serve as an inspiring example of how research and
organizing can go hand in hand to make history.</p>
<em> </em>
<p><em>Interested in learning more about how power
research and organizing can work together today? Join
the May 3 <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1386171734739678/">Map
the Power: Research for the Resistance Webinar</a>
at 8pm ET. You can <a
href="https://zoom.us/meeting/register/df094642c029bcc9cde7dc3c8da9331e">register
here</a>.</em></p>
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