Filling the hall with her deep, warm and triumphant voice, Freedom Singer Rutha Harris led a conference room full of union members in song throughout a panel featuring the testimonies of women part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the critical forces of the Civil Rights movement that confronted racial segregation with nonviolent direct actions 

A new book, Hands on the Freedom Plow, tells the stories of 52 women who joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s to combat the blatant and pervasive racism and injustice that infected the South. Three of those women told their stories today in an AFL-CIO forum in Washington, D.C.