Iconic Community Leaders

 

In each community, someone local took the lead.  The SHC was adamant and consistent about this strategy.  It's hard to imagine now how unorthodox was that collision of cultures, the coming together of students from a privileged college campus and community leaders from underserved communities, struggling against the legacies of povery. Mostly middle class kids from a prestigious predominantly white southern university, on the one hand.  Living with, working with, carrying out complex plans with, on the other hand, labor leaders from the coal fields, teachers from one-room schools houses, preachers from one-room wooden churches deep in the hollows and cotton fields.  For reasons that defy logic and even memory in their origins, however, the ties were binding.  From the summer work grew between community leaders and student leaders fierce loyalties, lifetime friendships, love.