Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: ABSTRACT

Freedom and the “Ground Crew:” SCLC’s Field Staff and the Southern Civil Rights Movement.

Alma Jean Billingslea
Spelman College



On more than one occasion, Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to the field staff members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as the “ground crew.” He explained that just as an aircraft could not take off and land without the work of mechanics, traffic controllers, runway directors and baggage handlers, people who all remained on the ground, SCLC could not have implemented its programs without the work of the field staff, most of whom had been recruited from movements in Montgomery, Albany, Savannah, Selma, Birmingham, and St. Augustine. Within SCLC the “ground crew” was organized into positions as state field secretaries, project directors, field coordinators, and project workers. Outside of SCLC, in local and national movements, they were simply freedom fighters. This paper examines how a particular conception of freedom functioned to create and unify the “ground crew.” In its presentation of the lives and movement histories of selected members of SCLC’s field staff, this paper also demonstrates how biography and life stories function as a mirror for history and society.