SNCC 60th

Featherstone had come to Mississippi (in 1964) after graduating from Washington D.C.’s Teacher College. He was first sent to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had disappeared.

There, along with Cleve Sellers and other SNCC workers, he searched empty houses, ravines, and wells. Despite the danger and the fear that accompanied it, Sellers remembered that Featherstone stayed “calm but firm.” From Mississippi, Featherstone went to Selma, Alabama.

After being arrested, he held freedom school classes in jail to bring people together. They worked collectively to define words like ownership/theft, thought about who they might apply to, and asked questions exploring the state of the country + the meaning of economic democracy.

Over the next few years, Featherstone’s leadership role in SNCC grew, and in 1967, he was elected SNCC’s program secretary... He later helped manage the Drum & Spear Bookstore, a D.C.-based bookstore born out of the Black Consciousness Movement...

On March 9, 1970, only hours after closing up shop at Drum & Spear, Featherstone and fellow SNCC staffer William “Che” Payne were driving along Route 1 in Maryland when a bomb exploded beneath the floorboard of their car. Both men died instantly.

Although authorities claimed that he and Che Payne were planning to bomb the courthouse where Rap Brown was on trial, SNCC released a statement charging that their fallen comrade had been murdered.

“He was murdered by the powerful forces in America that in their fear have decided to behead the black militant movement…they are blaming the victim for the crime, still acting as if they can blot out ugly truth by destroying the people who speak it.”