SNCC 60th

She acted as a bridge between her community and SNCC organizers. When SNCC’s Curtis Hayes and Hollis Watkins, arrived in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in March of 1962, Victoria “Vicki” Gray was one of the first people to attend the meeting.

After trying to register to vote herself, she used her roots in the community to garner support for SNCC’s voter registration efforts.

“And I guess it was because of the fact that it was so hard to get people to understand why it was important to go down,” she explained, “that I felt the need to give more and more time, talking to people and trying to get them to understand the importance.”

Ms. Gray’s connections helped her become an effective community organizer. She went to local churches + explained what Watkins and Hayes were doing. She organized a phone tree so that the “SNCC youngsters,” as she affectionately called them, would have at least one hot meal/day.

She convinced her minister at St. John’s Methodist Episcopal to open the church up to citizenship education classes. After attending an SCLC training in 1963, Gray began teaching these classes herself, and before long, she became a SNCC field secretary.

Victoria Gray was among a cohort of ordinary Mississippians who became leaders in SNCC and the Mississippi Movement.

Reflecting on her experience in SNCC, Ms. Gray said, “When I met [Ella Baker] and that community of youthful civil rights activists, I realized that this was exactly what I’d been looking for all of my conscious existence…It was like coming home.”