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= Emmie Schrader Adams =

Activism and Involvement
Emmie Schrader Adams was a part of an interracial collective of college activists during the Civil Rights Movement called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Civil Rights Movement took place between the 1950s and 1960s centering social justice struggle Black Americans to attain equal rights. After the Civil War, although slavery ended the discrimination of Black people did not. Black Americans continued to experience oppression through the lasting legacy of slavery as prejudice, intimidation, and violence. SNCC was formed out of the increased mobilization that gave younger activists a voice during the Civil Rights Movement. It was founded in 1960 by Ella Baker with a group of passionate students that sought to challenge Jim Crow Laws that were responsible for the social segregation and political oppression of Black Americans. SNCC was born out of the sit-in demonstrations  and boycotts at restaurants, retail stores, and cinemas then led into efforts to register and mobilize Black voters throughout the Deep South. With the support of the Voter Education Project, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization SNCC sought to combat disenfranchisement of Black people in the South.

Freedom Summer of 1964
SNCC was a leading organization that mobilized during Freedom Summer in 1964 and brought in their focal point of community organizing. This effort brought over 700 white students to the South where they volunteered as teachers and organizers. The presence of young white students from the North brought local and national news media attention to Freedom Summer that otherwise would not have taken place if it was only Black students organizing. It was a dangerous feat, the volunteers knew that there were threats on their lives and three volunteers were killed by Ku Klux Klan members and aided by members of law enforcement. The news coverage of  the organizing of these volunteers and brought awareness of voter discrimination and racial intimidation in the South which helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Freedom Summer challenge the culture of discrimination in the South by going against the laws that decided what Black people could and couldn’t do.

Early Life
Adams was born in a majority Catholic town called St. Paul, Minnesota on November 26, 1941. As a young girl she was a part of student government and found her passion for activism through trying to reform her private all-girls, college-prep school. After graduating, Adams takes a summer to study abroad in France and then returns and completes one year of college at Harvard-Radcliffe. She later accepted a scholarship to American University in Washington, D.C., to attend a graduate seminar entitled “Introduction to Africa” and later applied to attend Operation Crossroads Africa. Which is a U.S. based, private voluntary organization that sponsors cross-cultural exchanges and small-scale service projects in Africa. After a couple years of traveling through Africa, learning, and finding love, Adams returned back to the states to prepare to carry out clerical work in Jackson, MI for the Mississippi Summer Project (Freedom Summer) in1964. In Jackson, she learned that the FBI was tracking her whereabouts through the president of Radcliffe College. She later found out that  people close to her, even her father had contracts with the FBI. Similarly to white activists in that time, Adams received push back and threats from the  white rural community that no longer saw her as white. There was an atmosphere and societal norm of conformity and intimidation that any action toward progress was met with resistance. Fear surrounding activism for Black and white people. No one wanted any trouble from the local, dominant whites in the towns they were in and SNCC was by definition troublemakers because they were outsiders that sought to change the status quo. Adams reflects that the Freedom Summer efforts should have been slow quiet work that laid the foundation for groups such as the Mississippi Students Union for local activists to work through the existing condition of community relations in their areas. Adams’ parents were not happy about her involvement with SNCC and the FBI made family life harder for her by insinuating she was involved in a “Negro communist spy ring”. Her parents were distraught and emotionally burdened by the continued attacks from the FBI.

Continued SNCC Involvement
SNCC as an organization also challenges the gender roles that kept women out of positions of power. The founder, Elle Baker, has a specific vision for women’s participation in the civil rights movement because of her experience with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Baker wanted to ensure that women and young peoples’ voices were not only heard but valued in the decision making processes. Baker felt that many of the leaders in SCLC were out of touch with young people who were active in grassroots efforts. She ultimately wanted to create a movement culture that was familial and nurturing, which many women activists like Adams remember fondly and credits much of her growth as an advocate. In 1968, SNCC founded the Black Liberation Committee to tackle the intersectional issues of race, class, and gender.