Geneseo History Major Todd Christensen and the SNCC Digital Gateway Project

Todd Christensen, who graduated from Geneseo in 2015 with a history major, is working on the SNCC Digital Gateway (SDG), a collaborative project involving the SNCC Legacy Project, Duke University, and Civil Rights Movement scholars. At Geneseo, Todd completed a history honors thesis on Freedom Schools in the Civil Rights Movement, with support from a Geneseo Summer Fellowship. He also worked as an intern with the Algebra Project in Boston, with support from a Ambassador fellowship and as an intern on One Person, OneVote, a pilot project and predecessor to the SDG, which was launched in March 2015. At the time, Christensen reflected, “The work on OPOV has given me a new sense of what history really is. The website tells the story of black voting rights through the lens of the ordinary black people in the Deep South during the early 60s, who put their lives on the line to fight for first-class citizenship.  These people, who are almost always missing in history textbooks, both in high school and college, served as the backbone of grassroots movements for black political power.  And having the chance to work with Duke and the SNCC legacy Project in being able to tell their stories has taught me a lot about the power of regular people doing extraordinary things.”