Press Publishes Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press has published Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas (24.95, paper) edited by Jennifer Jensen Wallach and John A. Kirk.

This latest book from the University of Arkansas Press brings together articles, firsthand testimonies, and historical documents regarding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas.

The organization, referred to in the media as “SNCC” or “Snick,” and eventually “arsnick” in Arkansas, arrived in the state in October 1962 at the request of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations, the state affiliate of the Southern Regional Council. SNCC efforts began with Bill Hansen, a young white Ohioan — already a veteran of the civil rights movement — who traveled to Little Rock to help stimulate student sit-ins against segregation. The editors argue that it was thanks in large part to SNCC’s bold initiatives that most of Little Rock’s public and private facilities were desegregated by 1963. In the years that followed, many more SNCC volunteers came to the state to set up projects across the Arkansas Delta and helped empower local people to take a stand against racial discrimination.

According to Larry Malley, director of the Press, SNCC’s Arkansas project, though it played a pivotal part in transforming the state, garnered barely a footnote in the literature of the movement. “This collection serves as a corrective,” Malley said.

Jennifer Jensen Wallach is assistant professor of history at the University of North Texas and the author of Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow and Richard Wright: From Black Boy to World Citizen. John A. Kirk is chair and Donaghey Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the author or editor of five books, including An Epitaph for Little Rock: A Fiftieth Anniversary Retrospective on the Central High Crisis and Beyond Little Rock: The Origins and Legacies of the Central High Crisis (University of Arkansas Press).