Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of the Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1959-1977, Accession #11192-f, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was given to the University of Virginia Library on June 28, 2000, collectively by Bruce Smith, Woodbridge, Virginia, Steve Wise, Atlanta, Georgia, Bill and Betsy Jean Towe, Cary, North Carolina, and David and Ronda Kotelchuck, New York, New York, through Gregg Michel, Helotes, Texas.

Biographical and Historical Information

The New South Student and materials from the Virginia Students Civil Rights Committee, an interracial group of college students, were donated by Bill and Betsy Jean Towe. The Towes were the senior participants in the Virginia Summer Project held in several counties in Southside Virginia in 1965 and organized and led by the VSCRC. The Virginia Summer project involved anti- segregation protests, voter registration work, and other civil rights activities in this area of historically high black population. It was modeled after the Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi in 1964.

Other Southern Student Organizing Committee and Virginia Students Civil Rights Committee materials were given by Bruce Smith, a student at Lynchburg College, member of VSCRC, and a participant in the Virginia Summer Project, whose activism, support of black equality, and opposition to the Vietnam War, made him a well-known figure to the school's administration. By 1968, Smith was playing a leading role in the Richmond SSOC chapter.

Southern Student Organizing Committee and Nashville materials were donated by David Kotelchuck, a young Vanderbilt professor, and Ronda Stiley Kotelchuck, active in the Nashville headquarters of the SSOC and participant in the Virginia Summer Project.

Steve Wise has donated materials which supplement his other papers given previously to Special Collections. Wise was a graduate history student at the University of Virginia and the Southern Student Organizing Committee chairman in 1966-1967.

Scope and Content Information

These papers consist of correspondence and miscellaneous publications, some published by other organizations. There are also printed items, memoranda, mimeographed publications, newsletters, newspapers, articles, typed manuscripts, news clippings, order blanks, agendas, conference materials and form letters.

Subjects with individual folders include the founding of the Southern Student Organizing Committee; the Cone Mill Strike at Greensboro, North Carolina; Virginia Students Civil Rights Committee material; the Whiteville Strike against the National Spinning Company, Columbus County, North Carolina; and demonstrations in Nashville, Tennessee and at Vanderbilt University protesting segregation at the Campus Grill and elsewhere.