Margaret Herring used her southern accent, and a cover story that she was a freelance journalist, to interview officials in Selma, Alabama, to determine where their intentions with regard to civil rights protestors. They all insisted they had no trouble with “the Negroes.” Not long after that came the infamous beatings that have indelibly imprinted the Selma-to-Montgomery march on American memory.

In this excerpt from an emotional interview, Carol Hallstrom, who worked for SNCC in Mississippi, describes wrestling with issues of gender, race, and memory during her experiences in the 1960s and in her career as a social justice advocate afterward.

Nancy Stoller, who organized for SNCC in Arkansas, describes how her experience in the civil rights movement has shaped and continues to shape her values.

Arlene Dunn, who worked for SNCC in Arkansas, recalls that after the civil rights movement made desegregation of public accommodations illegal, private facilities began to proliferate in the South. Here, she remembers attempting to desegregate the cafeteria capitol building in Little Rock, Arkansas, which after the Civil Rights Act, suddenly became a privately owned building.

Sue Thrasher came to the civil rights movement convinced that racial justice should be her sole goal. But as she worked within the movement—sometimes in the secretarial roles women were often resigned to—and met other female activists, she came to understand the deep connections between the black freedom movement and the women’s movement.

Penelope Patch, who worked for SNCC in southwest Georgia and Mississippi in the early 1960s, recalls the constant fear experienced by activists in the segregated South. This fear was so powerful that it stayed with Patch for many years after she left the South.

Willie Blue, who ran into a fair number of scrapes as a SNCC fieldworker in Mississippi, briefly shares his belief in the importance of Freedom Schools. The genius of Bob Moses, he states, was recognizing that kids can’t do well in school with empty stomaches.

Grenada, Mississippi, didn’t get the attention that other civil rights movement hot spots did, recalls Bruce Hartford. But it certainly deserves mention. Here, Hartford describes crackdowns as seamlessly coordinated at the protests they violently stifled.

Wallace Roberts learned about Jim Crow and the civil rights movement in the same way a lot of northerners did: magazines and television. As images of protests and police brutality traveled north, Roberts traveled South, becoming a Freedom School Coordinator in Mississippi. In this excerpt, he recalls an encounter with Fannie Lou Hamer’s husband that taught him a great deal about the power of entrenched racism.

Journalist and historian Taylor Branch has written widely on the civil rights movement and American politics, and has been widely recognized for his work, including with a Pulitzer Prize. He sat down with Southern Oral History Program Associate Director David Cline to discuss his work documenting the civil rights movement. By his own admission he “missed” the movement at its height, but headed to Southwest Georgia in 1969 to see what he could do. His written reflections on what he saw launched his writing career. In this excerpt, he reflects on the unrecognized legacies of the movement.