Troubled Divisions of Labor: Race, Identification, and Rhetorical Activity in the 1964 Freedom Summer Project

Abstract

In 1964, the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a predominantly Black civil rights organization, recruited hundreds of volunteers, mostly white college students, to work with them in Mississippi for the summer with two goals in mind. First, they aimed to use the volunteers’ social connections in order to garner federal support for their work in Mississippi. Second, they aimed to collaborate across racial lines while maintaining Black leadership. While they worked toward both goals, they only achieved the first, which resulted in short-term gains and long-term damage.

Notes

¹ I would like to thank the reviewers and editor of Rhetoric Review, Benjamin Hedin, A. Abby Knoblauch, and Elise Verzosa Hurley, whose thoughtful questions and recommendations helped me to focus my analysis and sharpen my argument. I also thank Mellisa Huffman, Anna Knutson, Jessica McKee, and Todd Ruecker for their helpful feedback. Finally, I thank Michelle Hall Kells, who directed the dissertation on which this project is based.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lindsey Ives

Lindsey Ives is an assistant professor and coordinator of ESL composition courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, where she teaches writing courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her research focuses on the relationship between language and privilege in a variety of contexts. Her work has appeared in TESOL Quarterly and in the collection WAC and Second Language Writers: Research Towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices. Readers are welcome to contact her at [email protected].