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 speak 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.