Lowndes County And The Road To Black Power – Coming Feb. 2nd

Lowndes County And The Road To Black Power is showing on Peacock Feb. 2nd

The passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented not the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of a new, crucial chapter.

Nowhere was this next battle better epitomized than in Lowndes County, Alabama, a rural, impoverished county with a vicious history of racist terrorism. In a county that was 80 percent Black but had zero Black voters, laws were just paper without power. This isn’t a story of hope but of action. Through first person accounts and searing archival footage, LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER tells the story of the local movement and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Lowndes County.

LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER, the new documentary by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI, Citizen Ashe) and Geeta Gandbhir (Black and Missing, Why We Hate) has a series of special screenings and its theatrical release before its streaming debut on Peacock and its accompanying community engagement campaign in early 2023.

Through stunning archival footage and first-person accounts, LOWNDES COUNTY AND THE ROAD TO BLACK POWER tells the story of the local movement and SNCC organizers who fought not just for voting rights, but for Black Power in Lowndes County. An official selection of the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and a Critics Choice Documentary Awards nominee, the film is produced by Multitude Films, Participant, Peacock and Greenwich Entertainment, and features Ruby Sales, Courtland Cox, Judy Richardson, Jennifer Lawson, Mukasa Dada, and Wendell Paris, among several of the longstanding leaders from Lowndes County.

www.lowndescountyblackpower.com

2023 Screening of Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power
The screening of the Lowndes County film will take place on Feb 3, 2023 at 7:00pm at the Martin Luther King Memorial Library- 901 G St NW, Washington, DC 20001

Learn About Lowndes County


1965-1969 – Freedom Parties to Black Power

March 1965

SNCC makes contact in Lowndes County

June 1965

Mississippi Freedom Labor Union founded

July 1965

Poor People’s Corporation organized

July 1965

COFO disbands

July 1965

McComb project comes out against the Vietnam War

Summer 1965

Julian Bond runs for seat in Georgia Legislature

Summer 1965

Child Development Group of Mississippi runs Head Start programs

August 8, 1965

President Johnson signs Voting Rights Act

1965-1966

SNCC’s voter education efforts in Lowndes

January 1966

Murder of Sammy Younge & SNCC’s Statement on Vietnam

January 1966

Georgia Legislature refuses to seat Julian Bond

January 1966

Vernon Dahmer murdered

February 1966

Occupation of Greenville Air Force Base

February 1966

SNCC’s Atlanta Project grows out of Julian Bond’s campaign

March 1966

SNCC protests at South African Consulate in New York

April 1966

Lowndes County Freedom Organization founded

May 1966

Stokely Carmichael elected as SNCC’s chair

June 1966

Meredith March

Summer 1966

Fay Bellamy & Muriel Tillinghast go to USSR

August 1966

New York Times publishes Atlanta Project Statement

August 1966

Anti-Draft Protests by SNCC’s Atlanta Project

September 1966

ASCS elections in Alabama Black Belt & Mississippi

November 1966

Lowndes County Freedom Organization becomes Lowndes County Freedom Party

December 1966

SNCC staff meeting at Peg Leg Bates club

May 1967

Courtland Cox attends Bertrand Russell International War Crimes Tribunal in Stockholm

May 1967

OEO funds Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative Association

May 1967

Dottie & Bob Zellner present GROW proposal

July 1967

Stokely Carmichael goes to Cuba

August 1967

Maria Varela meets Reies Tijerina at National Conference for New Politics

November 1967

Robert Clark wins election in Holmes County

August 1968

Democratic Party Loyalists and Freedom Democrats face off in Mississippi primaries

May 1969

Jim Forman delivers Black Manifesto at Riverside Church

1969

New Communities formed in Southwest Georgia

1969

Fannie Lou Hamer founds Freedom Farm Cooperative


Timeline Source: SNCC Digital


Downloads

Lowndes County Freedom Organization
Lowndes County Freedom Organization: The Story of the Development of an Independent Political Movement on the County Level (PDF)

Lowndes County Candidates Lose, But Black Panther Strong
Lowndes County Candidates Lose, But Black Panther Strong (PDF)

Lowndes County Resources

Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1967).

Stokely Carmichael with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (New York: Scribner, 2003).

Charles E. Cobb, Jr., On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2008).

Cheryl Greenberg, ed., A Circle of Trust: Remembering SNCC (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998).

Henry Hampton, et al., eds., Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s (New York: Bantam Books, 1990).

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt (New York: New York University Press, 2009).

Paniel E. Joseph, Stokely: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas, 2014).

Interview with Courtland Cox by Joseph Mosnier, July 8, 2011, Civil Rights History Project, Library of Congress.