The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Racial Dynamics: The Importance of SNCC's Arkansas Project, 1962-1966
Authors:   , Lacy David Aaron 
Published: February 2025

In this thesis I look at the Arkansas Project and more specifically the racial dynamics within the project and the surrounding communities in Arkansas where SNCC engaged to assist the residents fight for their civil rights. In addition, I analyze how the differences in the urban and rural communities were affected by the racial dynamics of the project's leadership. The Arkansas project was led by William Hansen, a white man, which made him and the project unique from not only other SNCC projects, but other civil rights organizations. This distinction made the strategy that had to be implemented with the project staff internally and also externally in the Arkansas communities different because his race had to be taken into consideration for all purposes. Another aspect that came into play in Arkansas was the fact that some of their activities occurred in urban communities and others occurred in rural communities. These difference in communities affected not only how the local blacks received the SNCC volunteers, but also affected how local whites received the SNCC volunteers. Although the fact that the Arkansas Project had a white field director made it unique and the racial dynamics worthy of scholarly investigation, Bill Hansen's racial identity was far from the only reason that the organization's work in Arkansas is historically significant. This thesis also looks at the important activities in which SNCC engaged and impacted because of their presence in Arkansas. Of those activities, SNCC impacted the creation of several local groups where local citizens helped to fight for their civil rights, in fighting for their civil rights, those groups engaged in sit-ins, protests, and fighting legal battles in court where some of their cases made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court and impacted the civil rights movement in the south. Two important legal cases that had ramifications for the civil rights movement beyond the state that originated in Arkansas. The cases of Lupper v. State of Arkansas and Raney v. Board of Education made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court out of Arkansas. They helped shape the civil rights movement because Lupper helped clarify sit-in cases and the constitutionality of the arrests. The arrests were deemed unconstitutional because the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination in places of public accommodation and allowed peaceful attempts to be served like any other member of the public from punishable activities in spite of the fact the activities occurred prior to the date of its enactment. In addition, Raney helped define desegregation efforts in the south as many states attempted to avoid the Brown v. Board of Education decision by implementing "freedom of choice plans." Freedom of choice plans were state attempts to circumvent the Brown decision by making the students and their family choose which school they would attend. These cases helped shape the civil rights movement and dealt with sit ins and integrating schools. This thesis provides an important addition to the scholarship about SNCC and SNCC's Arkansas Project.