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Introduction:
Sue Thrasher is a renowned activist, writer, and educator who has been working in Civil Rights advocacy and activism since the early 1960s. She received her undergraduate degree at Scarritt College where she was able to learn about activism and education simultaneously. There she was able to join the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee shortly after arriving on campus, where she learned the basics about grassroots organization and planning (Sinsheimer). This prompted her to found the Southern Students Organizing Committee, and even served as its first executive director. During her tenure, she organized and led the “white folks project” during the Mississippi summer — an effort to include poor white folks in the movement (UMass).

Thrasher then transitioned to a job at the Highlander Center in 1978 where she worked to organize their archives and conducting oral histories. Later she moved to work at UMass Amherst to earn a doctorate in Educational Policy and Research, and from 1997 until her retirement in 2013, she worked to connect professors and those in higher education to lower-income public schools in the state of Massachusetts. Thrasher has written two books of her own, Deep in our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement and Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement as well as contributing to many others. She is still alive today and lives with her family in Savannah, Tennessee where she continues her activism and volunteers with local nonprofits.

Biography:
Sue Thrasher is originally from rural West Tennessee, where she grew up in a humble, multi-children family. Thrasher had been involved in activism from a young age — consistently working with her church and community to educate others in rural Tennessee (UMass). She was able to earn her high school diploma and secure a college degree at Scarritt College in Nashville. In a larger city, she was able to grow her activism by working in the Nashville Chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and learning the ropes of grassroots activism. Thrasher became a well-known and extremely involved figure in all forms of activism and protest in Tennessee, and worked alongside Black activists to come up with protests, forms of activism and how to educate the general public (Reisinger). This led to Thrasher taking a larger role in the Civil Rights Movement by being one of the founding members of the Southern Students Organizing Committee and even its first executive director — bringing her to center stage of the Civil Rights Movement.

Activism & Work:
Sue Thrasher began her activist work at the Nashville Chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee as a college student. She used her experience and work with other organizations and her heritage as a Southerner to go on to found the Southern Students Organizing Committee. As the executive director of the Southern Students Organizing Committee, Sue Thrasher would consistently host gatherings at her home with other local activist to plan, collaborate and work together (Michel, 36).

There she was able to involve herself with the “White Folks Project” — a collaborative effort between SSOC and SNCC to help bring poor whites and others who were being left behind by the system, into the general Civil Rights Movement. The goal was to create an interracial movement of the poor, where all groups were able to advocate for themselves and others in the South. Thrasher was able to use her role as a white Southerner to help garner support and explain why equality and civil rights were advantageous to all groups, not just African and Black Americans. Many poorer whites in the South were also struggling with extreme levels of poverty and limited education and job opportunities (SNCC) — instead of blaming Black Americans, Thrasher was able to bring these people together to learn and work. Thrasher believed in an interracial movement so much, that she focused on recruiting white Americans and saw SSOC as a version of SNCC for white students (Michel).

The Southern Students Organizing Committee was where Thrasher spent most of her time in activism. The SSOC focused on African American, Civil Rights, worker’s rights, women’s rights and opposition to the war in Vietnam. The focus of the organization was on protest and local forms of activism, and SSOC was able to organize white students in conjunction with other black led organizations like SNCC (Michel). Additionally, SSOC had an extensive literature program and would distribute thousands of educational pamphlets about the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement (Sinsheimer). The Southern Students Organizing Committee was later dissolved in 1969 due to internal issues among members and the divergence of ideology and direction of the organization.

After the breakup of SSOC Thrasher went on to found (with some of her SSOC counterparts), the Institute for Southern Studies — a North Carolina based nonprofit media and research center that advocates for progressive political and social causes that affect that Southern United States specifically (Reisinger). The Institute for Southern Studies was a way for her activism to move forward into environmental protection, democratic reform, and more.

Impact of the Movement:
The movement never stopped impacting She Thrasher. She built her whole life around activism and education, constantly wanting to create a better country. She claimed that, “history had overtaken us” and that the SSOC had succeeded in its initial goal of providing an avenue for white southern students to enter the Freedom Movement but after a decade had progressed from being a southern movement to end segregation to a national movement that also opposed the war in Vietnam. She believed her mission had been finished and it was time to move on to the next project. This brought her to the Institute for Southern Studies and then eventually to her PhD and role at UMass Amherst and the Massachusetts Public School System. She continued to work in activism until the end of her career, continuing to advocate for others.

“It wasn't so much about creating an organization, it was about how you involve more whites in the civil rights movement and pull them to the other side so that they're not against what's going on. And if they're a little bit hesitant, then the organization could provide a way for them to move into more activism and be a support group.”

— Sue Thrasher —

Later Life:
In 1986, she came to the University of Massachusetts Amherst looking to explore the connections between her educational work and activism — her dissertation focused on women popular educators, making her writings a mechanism to reflect on her own work and life. She worked at UMass Amherst for 27 years as Director of Outreach at Five Colleges. During her time in that role, she successfully ran two National Science Foundation projects, a National Endowment of the Humanities project on Native Americans in New England, and a ten-year partnership with the Springfield Public Schools on Teaching American History (UMass).

Thrasher has authored two books: Deep in our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement and Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement. She has contributed to several volumes of oral history interviews, including Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grassroots Activism in America, and We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations with Myles Horton and Paulo Freire. She co-edited two special issues of Southern Exposure on southern progressive history and religion in the South for the Institute of Southern Studies. She is now retired and lives in Tennessee with her family (Thrasher).

References:

 * 1) Michel, Gregg L. Struggle for a Better South: the Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964-1969. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
 * 2) Reisinger, Andrew. “Sue Thrasher Oral History Interview.” Georgia State University Library, 5 June 2017, digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/GSB/id/10238/.
 * 3) Sinsheimer, Joe. “Interview with Sue Thrasher.” Highlander Center. 11 Nov. 1983.
 * 4) Sue Thrasher (M.ED. 1994; Ed.D. 1996): Center for International Education. Aug. 2020, www.umass.edu/cie/sue-thrasher-med-1994-edd-1996.
 * 5) “Thrasher, Sue.” Civil Rights Digital Library, crdl.usg.edu/people/t/thrasher_sue/?Welcome.
 * 6) “UMarmot, the Catablog of SCUA : The Archive of Social Change.” Special Collecions and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries, scua.library.umass.edu/umarmot/thrasher-sue/.
 * 7) “White Folks Project.” SNCC Digital Gateway, 14 July 2020, snccdigital.org/events/white-folks-project/.