Former SNCC field secretary. Interview with Sinsheimer. Sellers discussed: his tenure at Howard University as a student and a civil rights activist; class divisions among the student population at Howard; his first encounters with Malcolm X during the summer of 1963; the impact of Emmett Till's murder on his political development; tensions between SNCC staff and the summer volunteers at Ohio training sessions for the 1964 Freedom Summer Project; Robert Moses' leadership role at the Ohio training sessions; searching for the bodies of the three "missing" civil rights workers in Philadelphia, MS; working in Holly Springs, MS, during the 1964 Freedom Summer Project; John Doar's efforts to protect civil rights workers in Mississippi; sexual tensions between black SNCC staffers and white volunteers; his role in coordinating MFDP activities at the Democratic National Convention; internal discussions among MFDP leaders in response to the Johnson administration's proposed "compromise."
This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.