Virtual Event | February 11, 2026 | 6:00 p.m. EST/ 5:00 p.m. CST/ 4:00 p.m. MST/ 3:00 p.m. PST

At its core, organizing is labor. And organizing within the deep south, during the 1960s was a laborious task for the youth of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. While most people emphasize the direct action that led to SNCC’s founding, their voter registration and grassroots organizing speaks to the theme of labor. SNCC entered communities not as leaders, but as fellow laborers. SNCC activists took a grassroots approach, working alongside community members, learning their needs, and building trust through shared labor. This roundtable discussion,with SNCC veteran Judy Richardson, movement historians Emilye Crosby and Hasan Kwame Jeffries, and public historian Christian Thomas will engage audiences around the SNCC’s labor in the field. Additionally, this panel will highlight the ongoing labor of SNCC veterans in collaboration with younger activists, archivists, teachers, and scholars as part of the Movement History Initiative. Together this collaboration has created resources that make this history visible and relevant to today—even as the study of history is under attack. Specifically, the end of the discussion will highlight the seven toolkits and an Interpretive Booklet—which document SNCC’s grassroots activism through primary sources and exercises linked to the SNCC Digital Gateway. This is one of the many examples as to how the organizing work of SNCC has continued into this modern-day era.

About the Speakers

Emilye Crosby is a professor of history at SUNY Geneseo, the author of A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi, and editor of Civil Rights History from the Ground Up. Her interest in the Civil Rights Movement grew up of her childhood in Mississippi and she especially enjoys working with the SNCC Legacy Project and Movement History Initiative.

Judy Richardson is a filmmaker and educator. She worked on all 14-hours of Eyes on the Prize and is co-editor of the SNCC women’s anthology, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. She was a Visiting Prof. at Brown University and co-directed (2) NEH Teacher Institutes. All of her work is grounded in her experiences as a staff worker with SNCC in Mississippi, Alabama, Southwest Georgia and the National Office.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University, the author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, and the editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement. He was the host of the Teaching Hard History podcast and is a member of the SNCC Legacy Project board.

Christina J Thomas is a civil rights scholar and a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Civil Rights History and Research. Her research primarily focuses on the history of civil rights, education, and Black women’s activism in Mississippi. She also serves as a community archivist for the Freedom Information Service Library in Jackson, MS.