SCOPE Project
Encyclopedia
The Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
's Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) was a bold voter registration civil rights initiative conducted from 1965-66 in 120 counties in six southern states.
, an S.C.L.C. aide to Dr. King, had been joined by white college students for various short term civil rights projects. From that interracial success, the idea of SCOPE grew to fruition. Dr. King and S.C.L.C. decided that there was a need for white college students to journey south to join with local activists. The goals included preparing formerly disenfranchised African Americans for voting, and, if necessary, organizing street demonstrations to help put political pressure on the Congress, should the proposed Voting Rights Bill of 1965 be met with congressional resistance and stalling, or even filibuster by die-hard segregationist forces.
In the Winter and Spring of 1965, the voting rights movement in Selma and the Selma-Montgomery March were challenging the segregated status quo. During the spring of 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assigned the Rev. Hosea L. Williams, SCLC Director of Voter Registration and Political Education, to lead the SCOPE Project, The SCOPE Project, which had been approved by the SCLC executive committee in December 1964, continued into the Fall of 1965 and the Spring of 1966. Some of the white college volunteers returned in the summer of 1966, and a few enrolled in Black southern colleges and continued community organization activities beyond the spring of 1966.
Dr. King announced the SCOPE project in a speech at UCLA on April 27, 1965 and his visit resulted in the recruitment of twenty UCLA students, including the late Joel Siegel
, who later became the film critic for Good Morning America
and Rick Tuttle
, who worked with Rev. Hosea Williams and Rev. Andrew Young
and spent two months in a Savannah jail as a result of his Movement activities before he was released. Tuttle’s case won the right to use property bonds for civil rights workers bail. Later he would serve 16 years as Los Angeles City Controller. The SCLC staff sent regional recruitment teams to visit colleges and universities nationwide. Mrs. Gwendolyn Green, the executive director of the Western Christian Leadership Conference joined Dr. King at UCLA and was temporarily assigned to the Atlanta office to serve as the Assistant SCOPE director, reporting to Rev. Hosea Williams
and Dr. King.
in Atlanta, which was led by Mr. Bayard Rustin
, the organizer of the 1963 March On Washington. The "faculty" for the orientation included: Vernon Jordan of the Urban League; Ralph Helstein, president of the meatpackers union; John Doar
, Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights); Michael Harrington
, author of “The Other America”; civil rights lawyer Charles Morgan, Jr.
, as well as Dr. King, Rev. Andrew Young
, Rev. Ralph Abernathy
, Junius Griffin, Rev. James Bevel
, and others on the SCLC Executive Staff.
The volunteers also tested and reported violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act
to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, John Doar, which led to U.S. Department of Justice
(DOJ) investigations and the deployment of Federal voter registrars to counties that denied African Americans the right to vote. SCLC field staff and SCOPE volunteers also worked with the DOJ Community Relations Service (CRS), and engaged in nonviolent demonstrations to dramatize the denial of voting rights and the refusal to remove "white only" signs and desegregate public accommodations.
S.C.L.C. and other organizations bridged racial and religious barriers to forge partnerships with both white Christian and Jewish groups, along with progressives in the Southern Regional Council
and other liberal organizations. SCOPE volunteers were assigned to work with African-American community leaders who had requested the white college volunteers.
The students lived with African-American families, who were paid $15 a week for their room and board, which barely covered expenses. About 40 of the college volunteers were asked by Dr. King, Rev. Williams and his assistant, Mrs. Gwendolyn Green, to join the SCLC Field Staff. They were then paid a subsistence salary of $5 a week, with the African American community providing housing and meals. Many veterans from other S.C.L.C campaigns were assigned to the SCOPE project including: Field Staff members Rev. Willie Bolden; Benjamin Van Clark; Jimmie L. Wells; Ms. Lula Williams; Lena Turner; Gloria Wise; Jewell Wise; Patricia Simpson; R. B. Cottonreader; J.T. Johnson; Tom Houck; Dana Swan; Rev. James Orange
; Ben “Sunshine” Owens; “Big Lester” Hankerson; Leon Hall, Bruce Hartford, and many others. Both Albert Turner and Stony Cooks worked closely with Hosea Williams in statewide leadership roles.
SCOPE volunteers experienced violence, tear-gassing, harassment and threats with guns on numerous occasions, according to "incident reports" from the project's administrative records. On June 18, 1965 in Camden, AL, for example, 18 SCOPE workers were arrested in a church for "illegal possession of boycott materials." One SCOPE worker, Mike Farley, was beaten in jail by a white prisoner, who was reportedly both bribed and threatened by a jailer. On July 8 in Wilcox County, AL, three cars carrying SCOPE workers were shot at by white men, after police stopped SCOPE workers and spoke with white men. On July 15, in Chatham County, GA SCOPE worker Shirley Savaris was threatened by a white man with a gun and told to leave town. The next day in Taliafferro County, GA, SCOPE workers were threatened by a deputy sheriff and county attorney with beatings and killings, "if they did not leave town the next day." Also in Taliaferro County, on July 23 SCOPE volunteer Richard Copeland was beaten by two whites on the courthouse steps in Crawfordsville. On July 28 in Sussex County, VA, 2 SCOPE workers, Gary Imsland and Elke Wiedenroth, were run off the road while returning from a church meeting and threatened by a white man with a shotgun. In Luverne, AL on August 3, SCOPE workers Dunbar Reed, Bruce Hartford, Carol Richardson along with a number of local students were attacked and beaten by a white mob after they integrated a local cafe. On August 18 in Berkeley County, SC, two SCOPE volunteers were beaten after attempting to integrate restaurants in Monk's Corner and the local SCOPE office and volunteer residence was shot up the following day.
, an author/journalist; Father James Groppi
, as an activist Catholic priest; Dr. Barbara Jean Emerson, a college administrator; Elizabeth Omilami
, actress and current CEO of Hosea's Feed The Hungry and Homeless Inc - a non-profit that provides food and assistance to the poor in Atlanta; Rabbi Moshe Shur, Hillel Rabbi at Queens College; international educator Peter Geffen, founder of the Abraham Heschel Day School in NYC; Dr. Dean Savage, chair, Dept of Sociology, Queens College;, Dr. James Simons, M.D., Oncologist, Kaiser Hospital, Oakland, CA;, Judy Van Allen (Institute For African Development, Cornell University; Dick Reavis, professor, NC State University); Dr. Bruce Mirhoff, professor, SUNY); Bruce Hartford, co-founder Civil Rights Vets website; Beth Pickens, attorney – NYC and others. Additional SCOPErs who became leaders can be found on the civil rights vets website.
John Lewis, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) Chairman from 1963–1966 (later a U.S. Congressman representing Atlanta), welcomed the SCOPE volunteers as “brothers and sisters in the movement,” who were willing to put their lives on the line for freedom. Mr. Lewis was jailed with white SCOPE workers, along with local African American SNCC and SCLC volunteers, in Americus, Georgia on August 1, 1965, after attempting to integrate to local churches. As Lewis said during a question and answer session, in 2006 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, "The SCOPE volunteers were no different than Freedom Summer
workers, we were all together that summer of 1965, and we all took the same risks. The SCOPE volunteers stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our struggle for civil and voting rights."
In assessing the courageous contributions of the SCOPE volunteers, Rev. Andrew Young, who went on from the Civil Rights Movement to serve as a U.S. Congressman, United Nations Ambassador and Mayor of Atlanta, told a King Holiday audience in Atlanta “The volunteers in SCOPE knew that some of the Freedom Summer workers had been killed the Summer before, but they came anyway.” On another occasion, he told a reunion of civil rights Movement volunteers, including SCOPE veterans “Most of you were taking your lives in your hands by associating with us. It made us truly a national movement, when the students came. Their parents had to learn about the South.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
's Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
(SCLC) was a bold voter registration civil rights initiative conducted from 1965-66 in 120 counties in six southern states.
Founding
While leading the Chatham County Crusade For Voters in Savannah, Georgia, one of many S.C.L.C. affiliates across the South, Rev. Hosea WilliamsHosea Williams
Hosea Lorenzo Williams was a United States civil rights leader, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist and politician...
, an S.C.L.C. aide to Dr. King, had been joined by white college students for various short term civil rights projects. From that interracial success, the idea of SCOPE grew to fruition. Dr. King and S.C.L.C. decided that there was a need for white college students to journey south to join with local activists. The goals included preparing formerly disenfranchised African Americans for voting, and, if necessary, organizing street demonstrations to help put political pressure on the Congress, should the proposed Voting Rights Bill of 1965 be met with congressional resistance and stalling, or even filibuster by die-hard segregationist forces.
In the Winter and Spring of 1965, the voting rights movement in Selma and the Selma-Montgomery March were challenging the segregated status quo. During the spring of 1965 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. assigned the Rev. Hosea L. Williams, SCLC Director of Voter Registration and Political Education, to lead the SCOPE Project, The SCOPE Project, which had been approved by the SCLC executive committee in December 1964, continued into the Fall of 1965 and the Spring of 1966. Some of the white college volunteers returned in the summer of 1966, and a few enrolled in Black southern colleges and continued community organization activities beyond the spring of 1966.
Dr. King announced the SCOPE project in a speech at UCLA on April 27, 1965 and his visit resulted in the recruitment of twenty UCLA students, including the late Joel Siegel
Joel Siegel
Joel Siegel was an American film critic for the ABC morning news show Good Morning America for over 25 years. Born to a Jewish family of Romanian descent, and raised in Los Angeles, California, he graduated cum laude from UCLA. His Romanian-born grandmother from Botoşani survived the Triangle...
, who later became the film critic for Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
and Rick Tuttle
Rick Tuttle
Rick Tuttle is an American politician. He was Los Angeles City Controller from 1985 to 2001. He stressed the importance of creating a strong democratic influence at UCLA, which was in his words "the best large public university in a major city." The four-term controller stepped down after...
, who worked with Rev. Hosea Williams and Rev. Andrew Young
Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young is an American politician, diplomat, activist and pastor from Georgia. He has served as Mayor of Atlanta, a Congressman from the 5th district, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
and spent two months in a Savannah jail as a result of his Movement activities before he was released. Tuttle’s case won the right to use property bonds for civil rights workers bail. Later he would serve 16 years as Los Angeles City Controller. The SCLC staff sent regional recruitment teams to visit colleges and universities nationwide. Mrs. Gwendolyn Green, the executive director of the Western Christian Leadership Conference joined Dr. King at UCLA and was temporarily assigned to the Atlanta office to serve as the Assistant SCOPE director, reporting to Rev. Hosea Williams
Hosea Williams
Hosea Lorenzo Williams was a United States civil rights leader, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist and politician...
and Dr. King.
Youth Volunteers
Initially, the SCLC had hoped to recruit 2000 volunteers, but due to the sometimes extreme danger involved with mid-60s civil rights movement in the southern states, college students from the north and west did not respond in the hoped for numbers. Eventually about 500 predominantly white college volunteers—representing nearly 100 universities—were deployed in 90 of the 120 SCOPE Project targeted counties across six southern states. Some students were re-deployed and assigned to more than one county by their leader, Rev. Hosea Williams, who had received leadership training as a World War II Army Sgt. in General George Patton's Black tank brigade, and was a combat decorated veteran.Training
The SCOPE project began on June 14, 1965, with a week-long Orientation at Morris Brown CollegeMorris Brown College
Morris Brown College is a private, coed, liberal arts college located in the Vine City community of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is a historically black college affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church...
in Atlanta, which was led by Mr. Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin
Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
, the organizer of the 1963 March On Washington. The "faculty" for the orientation included: Vernon Jordan of the Urban League; Ralph Helstein, president of the meatpackers union; John Doar
John Doar
John Michael Doar is an American lawyer and currently senior counsel with the law firm Doar Rieck Kaley & Mack in New York....
, Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights); Michael Harrington
Michael Harrington
Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington was an American democratic socialist, writer, political activist, professor of political science, radio commentator and founder of the Democratic Socialists of America.-Personal life:...
, author of “The Other America”; civil rights lawyer Charles Morgan, Jr.
Charles Morgan, Jr.
Charles "Chuck" Morgan Jr., was an American civil rights attorney from Alabama who played a key role in establishing the principle of "one man, one vote" in the Supreme Court of the United States decision in the 1964 case Reynolds v...
, as well as Dr. King, Rev. Andrew Young
Andrew Young
Andrew Jackson Young is an American politician, diplomat, activist and pastor from Georgia. He has served as Mayor of Atlanta, a Congressman from the 5th district, and United States Ambassador to the United Nations...
, Rev. Ralph Abernathy
Ralph Abernathy
Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following King's assassination, Dr. Abernathy took up the leadership of the SCLC Poor People's Campaign and...
, Junius Griffin, Rev. James Bevel
James Bevel
James L. Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who, as the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era:...
, and others on the SCLC Executive Staff.
Activist Accomplishments
The students were led by local African American leaders in the targeted counties and joined by Black community volunteers, including local ministers and large numbers of local high school and college youth. The SCOPE Project registered an estimated 49,000 new voters through the combined efforts of the local community and the SCOPE college volunteers during a ten week initiative, from June 14 - August 28. In addition, SCOPE educated thousands of citizens in political and voter literacy education classes.The volunteers also tested and reported violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....
to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, John Doar, which led to U.S. Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
(DOJ) investigations and the deployment of Federal voter registrars to counties that denied African Americans the right to vote. SCLC field staff and SCOPE volunteers also worked with the DOJ Community Relations Service (CRS), and engaged in nonviolent demonstrations to dramatize the denial of voting rights and the refusal to remove "white only" signs and desegregate public accommodations.
S.C.L.C. and other organizations bridged racial and religious barriers to forge partnerships with both white Christian and Jewish groups, along with progressives in the Southern Regional Council
Southern Regional Council
The Southern Regional Council is a reform-oriented organization created to avoid racial violence and promote racial equality in the Southern United States. Voter registration and political-awareness campaigns are used toward this end. The SRC evolved from the Commission on Interracial...
and other liberal organizations. SCOPE volunteers were assigned to work with African-American community leaders who had requested the white college volunteers.
The students lived with African-American families, who were paid $15 a week for their room and board, which barely covered expenses. About 40 of the college volunteers were asked by Dr. King, Rev. Williams and his assistant, Mrs. Gwendolyn Green, to join the SCLC Field Staff. They were then paid a subsistence salary of $5 a week, with the African American community providing housing and meals. Many veterans from other S.C.L.C campaigns were assigned to the SCOPE project including: Field Staff members Rev. Willie Bolden; Benjamin Van Clark; Jimmie L. Wells; Ms. Lula Williams; Lena Turner; Gloria Wise; Jewell Wise; Patricia Simpson; R. B. Cottonreader; J.T. Johnson; Tom Houck; Dana Swan; Rev. James Orange
James Orange
James Edward Orange, MLK March website biography. Accessed 2008-02-17. was a pastor and a leading civil rights activist in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in America.-Personal life:...
; Ben “Sunshine” Owens; “Big Lester” Hankerson; Leon Hall, Bruce Hartford, and many others. Both Albert Turner and Stony Cooks worked closely with Hosea Williams in statewide leadership roles.
SCOPE volunteers experienced violence, tear-gassing, harassment and threats with guns on numerous occasions, according to "incident reports" from the project's administrative records. On June 18, 1965 in Camden, AL, for example, 18 SCOPE workers were arrested in a church for "illegal possession of boycott materials." One SCOPE worker, Mike Farley, was beaten in jail by a white prisoner, who was reportedly both bribed and threatened by a jailer. On July 8 in Wilcox County, AL, three cars carrying SCOPE workers were shot at by white men, after police stopped SCOPE workers and spoke with white men. On July 15, in Chatham County, GA SCOPE worker Shirley Savaris was threatened by a white man with a gun and told to leave town. The next day in Taliafferro County, GA, SCOPE workers were threatened by a deputy sheriff and county attorney with beatings and killings, "if they did not leave town the next day." Also in Taliaferro County, on July 23 SCOPE volunteer Richard Copeland was beaten by two whites on the courthouse steps in Crawfordsville. On July 28 in Sussex County, VA, 2 SCOPE workers, Gary Imsland and Elke Wiedenroth, were run off the road while returning from a church meeting and threatened by a white man with a shotgun. In Luverne, AL on August 3, SCOPE workers Dunbar Reed, Bruce Hartford, Carol Richardson along with a number of local students were attacked and beaten by a white mob after they integrated a local cafe. On August 18 in Berkeley County, SC, two SCOPE volunteers were beaten after attempting to integrate restaurants in Monk's Corner and the local SCOPE office and volunteer residence was shot up the following day.
SCOPE Veterans Legacy
The SCOPE volunteers were profoundly impacted on a personal level by the inter-racial experiences throughout their lives, as were the host families and communities. Press accounts termed the SCOPE volunteers "the freedom corps." Although the college students were in no way leaders of the civil rights movement, they were a part of a generational vanguard of about only 3,000 whites between 1961–1966, who were willing to put themselves in harms way during the movement struggle in the South. Rev. Hosea Williams predicted in an interview with the Stanford University radio station in August, 1965, that SCOPE volunteers would provide significant leadership to America in the future. And, within the ranks of the SCOPE students there have been many who provided impressive leadership in various fields, including: Dr. Jo FreemanJo Freeman
Jo Freeman is an American feminist, political scientist, writer and attorney. As a student at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s, she became active in organizations working for civil liberties and the civil rights movement...
, an author/journalist; Father James Groppi
James Groppi
Father James Edmund Groppi was a Roman Catholic priest and noted civil rights activist.-Early years, education, ordination as priest:...
, as an activist Catholic priest; Dr. Barbara Jean Emerson, a college administrator; Elizabeth Omilami
Elizabeth Omilami
Elisabeth Williams-Omilami is an African-American human rights activist and an actress, a writer and a Pastor while being the voice of the less fortunate at Hosea Feed the Hungry.-Life and career:...
, actress and current CEO of Hosea's Feed The Hungry and Homeless Inc - a non-profit that provides food and assistance to the poor in Atlanta; Rabbi Moshe Shur, Hillel Rabbi at Queens College; international educator Peter Geffen, founder of the Abraham Heschel Day School in NYC; Dr. Dean Savage, chair, Dept of Sociology, Queens College;, Dr. James Simons, M.D., Oncologist, Kaiser Hospital, Oakland, CA;, Judy Van Allen (Institute For African Development, Cornell University; Dick Reavis, professor, NC State University); Dr. Bruce Mirhoff, professor, SUNY); Bruce Hartford, co-founder Civil Rights Vets website; Beth Pickens, attorney – NYC and others. Additional SCOPErs who became leaders can be found on the civil rights vets website.
John Lewis, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
(SNCC) Chairman from 1963–1966 (later a U.S. Congressman representing Atlanta), welcomed the SCOPE volunteers as “brothers and sisters in the movement,” who were willing to put their lives on the line for freedom. Mr. Lewis was jailed with white SCOPE workers, along with local African American SNCC and SCLC volunteers, in Americus, Georgia on August 1, 1965, after attempting to integrate to local churches. As Lewis said during a question and answer session, in 2006 at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, "The SCOPE volunteers were no different than Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting...
workers, we were all together that summer of 1965, and we all took the same risks. The SCOPE volunteers stood shoulder to shoulder with us in our struggle for civil and voting rights."
In assessing the courageous contributions of the SCOPE volunteers, Rev. Andrew Young, who went on from the Civil Rights Movement to serve as a U.S. Congressman, United Nations Ambassador and Mayor of Atlanta, told a King Holiday audience in Atlanta “The volunteers in SCOPE knew that some of the Freedom Summer workers had been killed the Summer before, but they came anyway.” On another occasion, he told a reunion of civil rights Movement volunteers, including SCOPE veterans “Most of you were taking your lives in your hands by associating with us. It made us truly a national movement, when the students came. Their parents had to learn about the South.”
External links
- Civil Rights Movement Veterans
- Dynamics of Idealism: Volunteers for Civil Rights, 1965-1982 online data archive ~ Data and Information Services Center (University of Wisconsin)
- Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference website
- SCOPE project - Civil Rights Digital Library