In 2013, the SNCC Legacy Project, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the Duke University Libraries, and humanities scholars formed a partnership—now called the Movement History Initiative (MHI)—to tell SNCC’s history of grassroots organizing with activists’ voices at the center and to pass movement knowledge on to subsequent generations.
The following toolkits are part of a larger multimedia documentary project hosted by Duke University that includes the SNCC Digital Gateway. The kits are ultimately designed to work in tandem with the website, telling SNCC’s history from the inside-out and bottom-up.
Developed in partnership with six historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), its collaborators include North Carolina Central, Howard and Tougaloo, as well as six African American history museums, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the civil rights museums in Memphis, Birmingham and Jackson.
Each toolkit focuses on one of 6 themes, from Freedom Teaching, Art and Culture, Women and Gender, and Black Power, to the Organizing Tradition. All highlight firsthand accounts from SNCC organizers and the community members they worked alongside.