Nelson Blackstock papers

Nelson Blackstock was born into a working-class family in 1944. He attended grammar school in Mountain View, Georgia, high school in Forest Park, Georgia, and was interested in the history of the South and the Civil War from an early age. He was part of the first de-segregated freshman class that was admitted to the Univeristy of Georgia in 1962. In 1963, he became interested in the civil rights movement when he met someone who was a part of the Committee for Nonviolent Action's Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Peace Walk speak at the University. Blackstock participated in the sit-in movement at various Atlanta restaurants, during which he met college students from Georgia Tech, Emory University, and Atlanta University with whom he helped found the Georgia Students for Human Rights. He was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was active in the organization’s White Folks Project, which was launched in Biloxi, Mississippi and sought to bring poor white people into the civil rights movement. Some members of the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) were involved with the project as well. Blackstock attended the founding meeting of the SSOC in Knoxville, Tennessee at the Highland Folk Center where members discussed organizing miners in Harlan County, Kentucky. Although Blackstock was not a member of the SSOC, he was closely affiliated with it and drew cartoons for SSOC publications. After dropping out of the University of Georgia, he later enrolled at Georgia State University where he established the Committee on Social Issues. Blackstock joined the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) in February 1967, helped set up a YSA chapter in Georgia, and also worked in the national office of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In addition, Blackstock was a writer for and managing editor of The Militant, an editor and writer for Pathfinder Press, and was a technical writer specializing in medicine. Blackstock was involved with the Pathfinder Bookstore in Los Angeles, where he gave lectures on many political topics as part of the Militant Labor Forum. Blackstock also wrote the book Cointelpro : The FBI’s War on Political Freedom, which was published by Pathfinder Press in 1988.

The Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) aimed to connect small activist groups throughout the South that focused on civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, labor organizing, and women’s rights. The organization held workshops with the Southern Project of the National Student Association, and organized conferences about reforming the university and migrant farm labor, among other topics. The SSOC published The New South Student, The Phoenix, The New Rebel newsletters, in addition to various pamphlets. The SSOC became a fraternal organization of the SDS and acted as a “nerve center” for the SDS’s organizing activities in the South. Although the SSOC was formed with the intention of being a comprehensive organization that included students from all races and backgrounds in matters regarding the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the Chicano and Women’s movement, the organization was largely composed of white college students.