Saltonstall, Stephen L.

Hide Profile

Civil Rights demonstration, Cairo

In the summer 1962, future Harvard student Steve Saltonstall was one of the early wave of white northerners who went into the Jim Crow south to work for civil rights. Still a teenager, Saltonstall assisted a SNCC project in Cairo, Illinois, then a hotbed of KKK activity, that sought to integrate public accommodations built with federal funds.

From there, Saltonstall enlisted on a crew organized by the American Friends Service Committee, to travel fifty miles west to work on a seemingly more mundane project, to help clear a tree-filled drainage ditch near the segregated, all-white community of Circle City, Missouri, that caused the city to flood each year. The AFSC crew was integrated by a single African American woman who, as Saltonstall recalled, "ultimately left the camp for unknown reasons I never fully understood," and as a result, the northerners was visited nightly by night riders. "But the head camp counselor, Mick Micklem," Saltonstall wrote, "was a southerner who persuaded the rednecks to leave. We cleared the trees from the ditch and had a Quaker Meeting in it on the last day of camp. It was a beautiful sight, pink cotton flowers as far as one could see."

After college, Saltonstall spent some time as a back to the land hippie and later received a law degree from Northeastern University. Today he does civil trial work in Vermont, with a specialty in personal injury and wrongful death, criminal defense, and civil rights and civil liberties.

From the guide to the Stephen L. Saltonstall Photograph Collection PH 014., 1962, (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries)

Archival Resources
Role Title Holding Repository
creatorOf Stephen L. Saltonstall Photograph Collection PH 014., 1962 Special Collections and University Archives, UMass Amherst Libraries
Role Title Holding Repository
Relation Name
associatedWith American Friends Service Committee. corporateBody
associatedWith Engel, John P. person
associatedWith Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.) corporateBody
Place Name Admin Code Country
Cairo (Ill.).
Circle City (Mo.).
Subject
Civil rights demonstrations
Occupation
Activity

Person

Related Descriptions
Information

Permalink: http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6073rk3

Ark ID: w6073rk3

SNAC ID: 61570303