- Collection:
- Civil Rights History Project
- Title:
- Jennifer Lawson oral history interview conducted by Emilye Crosby in Washington, DC, District of Columbia, 2015 December 11
- Contributor to Resource:
- Lawson, Jennifer, 1946- interviewee
Crosby, Emilye, interviewer
Bishop, John Melville, videographer
Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Date of Original:
- 2015
- Subject:
- Black Panther Party
Drum and Spear Bookstore
Mississippi Freedom Project
National Council of Negro Women
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
Tuskegee Institute
African American civil rights workers--Alabama--Interviews
Civil rights movements--Alabama
Civil rights movements--Mississippi
Civil rights movements--United States
Voter registration--Alabama
Birmingham (Ala.)--Race relations--History
Lowndes County (Ala.)--Politics and government - Location:
- United States, 39.76, -98.5
United States, Alabama, 32.75041, -86.75026
United States, Alabama, Jefferson County, Birmingham, 33.52066, -86.80249
United States, Alabama, Lowndes County, 32.15475, -86.65011
United States, District of Columbia, Washington, 38.89511, -77.03637
United States, Mississippi, 32.75041, -89.75036 - Medium:
- personal narratives
interviews
oral histories (literary genre)
video recordings (physical artifacts) - Type:
- MovingImage
- Description:
- Jennifer Lawson shares her experience throughout the Civil Rights Movement. She discusses her decision to leave college to join the movement, and her involvement with voter registration activities in Mississippi. She joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1966 and was elected to the organization's central coordinating committee. She shares her role in designing the Black Panther symbol and campaign materials for the Lowndes Country Freedom Organization (later the Black Panther Party). She reflects on the issues surrounding racial separatism and her decision to leave organizational efforts in search of other activist work, including joining the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). She recalls going to Cuba and being involved with art programs that celebrated African and Cuban heritage and moved to Tanzania from 1970-1972 and became part of a writer's group with Walter Rodney. She later attended Columbia University to merge her interest in civil rights activism and art, and pursued a film degree.
Recorded in Washington, District of Columbia, on December 11, 2015.
Civil Rights History Project collection (AFC 2010/039: 0131), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Copies of items are also held at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (U.S.).
Jennifer Lawson was born in June of 1946, in Fairfield, Alabama and encountered racial segregation as a young child. Lawson later attended Tuskegee College. In the summer of 1963 she moved to New York City to pursue an internship at Sloan Kettering Center and in the summer of 1964 pursued a Research Aide role, meanwhile attending demonstrations to protest Martin Luther King in Birmingham Jail. While at Tuskegee she was involved with the student group that worked on desegregating Macon County and mobilizing voting registration. After Freedom Summer 1964, she went to Jackson, Mississippi to work on voter registration, and later left school in the Spring of 1966 to join SNCC and work in Wilcox County. After she left SNCC, she worked at the National Council of Negro Women and worked with Dorothy Height and Fanny Lou Hamer. She was involved with designing the symbol of the Black Panther for the Lowndes County Party, and created political education material through art. Lawson was elected to the central coordinating committee of SNCC, and then moved to Atlanta. At the time when SNCC began to adopt racial separatism, she left the organization. She attended Columbia University to pursue art in formal education, and studied film, working in public television for the last thirty years. Lawson is active in volunteering with the SNCC Legacy Project today.
The Civil Rights History Project is a joint project of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture to collect video and audio recordings of personal histories and testimonials of individuals who participated in the Civil Rights movement.
In English.
Finding aid http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af013005 - Metadata URL:
- http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afc2010039.afc2010039_crhp0131
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Collection is open for research. To request materials, please contact the Folklife Reading Room at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.contact
- Extent:
- 17 video files (Apple ProRes 422 HQ, QuickTime wrapper) (4:09:19) : digital, sound, color.
transcript 1 item (.pdf) : text files. - Original Collection:
- Civil Rights History Project collection AFC 2010/039: 0131
- Contributing Institution:
- American Folklife Center
- Rights:
-
