Descripción
Original mock up for a personnel sign up sheet for SCOPE volunteers consisting of two manuscript sheets in an unknown hand along with four repurposed Morehouse college student personnel sheets with holographic additions and revisions, all combined to compose a thorough volunteer information packet for SCOPE volunteers looking to be sent around the Deep South to work volunteer voter drives. The Summer Community Organization and Political Education Project of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was a voter registration civil rights initiative conducted from 1965 to 1966 in 120 counties in six southern states. Officially announced by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at a speech in 1965 at UCLA, the project started with a plan to recruit up to 2000 students from all across the US, but fell short of this goal mostly due to fear of violent retribution many volunteers possibly faced. The project officially kicked off with an orientation in June of 1965 at Morris brown College in Atlanta ad afterwards volunteers tested and reported violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in counties throughout the South. SCOPE volunteers were subject to 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, Alabama, 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 to attack Farley. On July 8 in Wilcox County, Alabama, 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, Georgia, SCOPE worker Shirley Savaris was threatened by a white man with a gun and told to leave town. The next day in Taliaferro County, Georgia, 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, the county seat. On July 28 in Sussex County, Virginia, two SCOPE workers, Gary Imsland and Elke Wiedenroth, were run off the road while returning from a church meeting, and threatened by a white man armed with a shotgun. In Luverne, Alabama, on August 3, SCOPE workers Dunbar Reed, Bruce Hartford, and 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, South Carolina, two SCOPE volunteers were beaten after attempting to integrate restaurants in Monk's Corner. The local SCOPE office and volunteer residence was shot up the following day.
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