SNCC 60th

Durham, North Carolina-native Worth Long came to Selma, Alabama to replace SNCC’s Bernard and Colia Lafayette as project director in 1963. Long had attended college at Philander Smith College in Little Rock in 1962.

When Long stood trial for his arrest in June 1963 in Little Rock court, he wore a long black armband to mourn the death of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers who had been murdered in his driveway the day before. Just months after, he became a SNCC organizer.

Long developed a philosophy of justice at an early age. His father was the Presiding Elder at a Durham AME Zion church who regularly preached to his congregation the ideals of Pan-Africanism and Black self-sufficiency.

Long remembered these lesson as he developed his own philosophy of social justice well before he even reached SNCC. His passion for oral history was so strong that when he married in 1959, he chose a tape recorder rather than a wedding ring.

In Selma, as was the experience of many SNCC activists, Long realized he could not evade violence. Even before he got there, Long had flown into Birmingham, Alabama the same day as the Sixteenth Street Church bombing.

He pulled up to the scene of what was once a church and space of mass meetings and what was now piles of rubble and debris, where four dead girls had just been removed. Though deeply disturbed, Long continued on to Selma.