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Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. Edited by Faith S. Holsaert and others. (Urbana and other cities: University of Illinois Press, c. 2010. Pp. [xviii], 616. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-252-03557-9.)
The civil rights movement embodied the struggle for both civil and human rights and represents one of the most dynamic periods in U.S. history. Building on traditions of activism and resistance, movement participants mounted successful assaults on discriminatory practices that were entrenched in American domestic policy and society. Unquestionably, women and students played integral roles in this movement and were critical to its successes. This book expands the historiography of the freedom movement by presenting the voices of fifty-two women associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an authentically grassroots organization that challenged racism while building rural black communities through education and economic empowerment.
Founded by students in 1960 with the support of civil rights warrior Ella Baker, SNCC had the primary goal of enfranchising black rural southerners while adhering to the theoretical tenet of nonviolence. Like participants in the larger civil rights movement, the women of SNCC represented a crosssection of freedom fighters, with various talents and experiences, unified by a steadfast commitment to social justice. The SNCC women represented in this book are ethnically and racially diverse and hail from the South, North, and Midwest. Their personal narratives illustrate powerful political awareness and extraordinary personal commitment not expected of...