Chuck McDew

Biography:

Charles McDew was an activist and a theoretician in the civil rights movement. He was influenced by Rabbi Hillel’s oft-remembered questions: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” A native of Ohio, who attended his father’s alma mater, South Carolina State College, McDew participated in the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. Described by SNCC icon Bob Moses as a “black by birth, a Jew by choice and a revolutionary by necessity,” McDew served as SNCC chairman from 1961 to 1963. Under McDew’s guidance, SNCC expanded its community organizing activities, penetrating into those parts of the South that were deemed too dangerous by traditional civil rights organizations, such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). SNCC’s field secretaries led the way in desegregating local facilities, operating freedom schools and registering voters. In one of the most extraordinary and sustained displays of courage and resolve in the history of American activism, SNCC field workers endured years of savage and continuous repression to challenge the most racist state, Mississippi, and their struggle peaked in the Mississippi Summer Project (Freedom Summer) of 1964, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenge to the party establishment at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. After the Mississippi Summer Project ended, McDew continued to work for social and political change, developing local leadership and dissolving racial and cultural barriers. He has been a teacher and community and labor organizer, and managed antipoverty programs.

Content of Video:

In this tape, Chuck McDew discusses his childhood, especially growing up in the turbulent and confusing Jim Crow era. He also discusses his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, starting with sit-ins in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where he attended college. In the early 1960s, McDew became deeply committed to SNCC’s campaign in Mississippi. In fighting for racial justice, McDew endured multiple arrests and violent white cops, and was saddened by murdered colleagues. Such experiences led him to question the purpose of morality in an amoral context. 

Video Link: