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Eleanor Holmes Norton: Mississippi Surveillance

U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) was in college when the Montgomery bus boycott propelled the civil rights movement onto the national stage. Having grown up in segregated Washington, D.C., Norton wanted to further the cause of racial equality. She organized sit-ins in Ohio and Maryland and traveled to Mississippi with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The intensity of violence and repression Norton saw in the South inspired her lifelong commitment to social activism, culminating in her 1990 election as a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives.

My Story

Mississippi Surveillance. I took a bus from Jackson to Greenwood and I was met ... (1:11)
In Constant Danger. There are two categories of people here. I think it's really important ... (0:51)
Breaking the Dissenters. The best example is a man who died recently. Jim Forman ... (0:46)

Themes

Stifling Dissent. In times of crisis, one argument is that surveillance is warranted for national security. Another is that unchecked surveillance will be used to stifle dissent. Eric Hallengren, Julian Bond, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Edith Bell, Peter Ackerman and Leslie Salgado describe how the lines get blurred between stifling dissent and protecting the nation.