SNCC activist Ekwueme Michael Thelwell (17min)

On Saturday August 6th, the 40th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Amy Goodman spoke with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, the Jamaican-born novelist and Professor of Afro American studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was also the former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). While working for SNCC in Washington DC, Thelwell recruited volunteers for the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign in Mississippi, which sent volunteers into the state to register African-American voters.

Thelwell's many accomplishments include his publication Ready for Revolution, a compilation of the memoirs of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure), chair of SNCC and honorary prime minister of the Black Panther Party. Thelwell is also the author of the novel The Harder They Come. Amy Goodman interviewed Thelwell at the 10th annual Grassroots Radio Conference, attended by hundreds of media activists from across the country.