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work, thereby accounting for the large repository of field and other reports, giving SNCC the best detailed records (for its short life) among its contemporary and often competing organizations.

"Write it down" was his constant injuction; because he insisted, the SNCC files contain often lyrical descriptions of exactly how an organizer goes about his or her work. Here one may learn how to insinuate yourself into a community, how to learn who the real "leaders" are and aren't, and how to help those who aspire to leadership to develop to their fullest. The SNCC Field Secretary's reports, written at Forman's insistence and withheld at great peril, offer a day-to-day account of community organizing that cannot be found anywhere else. SNCC, of course, because of Forman's leadership and personality, was unlike any other organization.

His scholarly bent also guided Forman's selection of SNCC staff; the organization had the best research arm of any civil rights organization before or since. SNCC Field Secretaries entered the rural, small town South armed with evidence of who controlled and owned what, and who, in turn, owned them.

"Power sttucture" was no abstract phase for SNCC's band of brothers and sisters, but a real list with real persons' names and addresses, descriptions of assets and interlocking directorships, demonstrating how large interests, ranging from Memphis and New York banks to the Queen of England, might own at least partial control of a plantation in Mississippi's Delta. Knowledge of who owned what was crucial to SNCC's strategies. From it we knew that Southern peonage was no accident, but rather the deliberate result of economic policies determined thousands of miles away from the cotton field.

SNCC's data on income and wealth distribution were exact, as well. The series entitled "The Economic Condition of Mississippi (or Alabama or Georgia) Negroes" showed in stark columns just how profitable the system of white supremacy was for some, how devastating for others.