Re “Student civil rights workers recall efforts,” June 25-27 edition:

We appreciate the Richmond Free Press devoting an article to the Civil Rights Movement and the 50th reunion of the Virginia Students’ Civil Rights Committee (VSCRC). There is one point that we would like to clarify about the origins of the VSCRC and its relationship to other groups active at that time.

Following the Mississippi summer of 1964, two groups were working in the fall of 1964 to energize Virginia students — the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Virginia College Council on Human Relations (VCCHR). The VSCRC was formed to focus on the needs of Virginia, where our members lived and attended school, rather than to travel to the Deep South.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, meanwhile, made plans to recruit students from all over the United States to work across the South, including in the counties of Virginia’s Black Belt in their SCOPE project. There was an atmosphere of cooperation between the participants in the two groups as there were many shared goals and objectives, but VSCRC was not sponsored by the SCLC.

We are indebted to the wisdom and experience that the members of SNCC shared with the VSCRC as a fledgling civil rights group, but VSCRC was not a part of SNCC either.

The VSCRC also realized that the NAACP was an organization that we needed to work with because it already was functioning in each county that we entered. The NAACP was the civil rights organization of record. So we worked with their leaders. We only sought to develop that relationship; we were not intent on forming chapters of VSCRC in the counties where we were invited.

We only mention this because we realize that many readers today may not recognize the subtle differences that existed between groups. They also may not know about the spirit of cooperation that existed in rural areas, where those differences were not as important as points of agreement and the realization that folks needed to work together if they were to survive or make progress.

BRUCE SMITH

DOTTIE EDWARDS

LUCIOUS “DUKE” EDWARDS

The writers are members of the VSCRC 50th Reunion Organizing Committee.