Building Institutional Wealth: Youth Participants in Creating SNCC’s Critical Oral Histories, 2015–19

This paper examines the pedagogical lessons learned as we’ve brought together current youth voting rights activists from NC, GA, FL, MS and TN with SNCC veterans between 2015-2019, including the founder of the freedom schools, Charlie Cobb. What academic and archival practices have been helpful in preserving the original freedom schools’ pedagogical innovations? How have youth activists in the present day shaped the kinds of historical material the SNCC veterans have created alongside activists and scholars in the SNCC Digital Gateway? How has Duke reshaped its copyright and archival practices to incorporate these new ways of building and sharing information? In what ways are young voting rights activists today building on and reshaping freedom schools’ pedagogy in their own work?