Act for Freedom, Chicago, Illinois: Newsletter, circa 1965

The majority of the collection details Cleveland L. Sellers, Jr.'s role in a variety of student, civil rights, leftist, and Pan African movements in the 1960s and 1970s; other materials documenting his personal, academic, and professional life. Many of the materials are in photocopy form, the originals, severely water and mold damaged, having been removed.

A small series of personal papers include childhood magazine covers, papers regarding his draft resistance case (1967-1971); a 1983 unsuccessful bid for city council in Greensboro, North Carolina; biographical clippings; a few scattered items from his mother Pauline Taggert Sellers' youth and early marriage, including V Mail; data regarding other family members, and information regarding Denmark, and Bamberg County, South Carolina churches and schools, including Voorhees College and the Denmark Chapter of the South Carolina Area Trade Schools; with Seller's contracts for his book The River of No Return. Personal correspondence (1960s-1990s) regarding Sellers' political views and activities include letters (1968) from jail, with some mentions of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and events, legal problems and pardon relating to the Orangeburg Massacre. Materials on the latter topic include photocopies of court papers, Sellers' appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court (circa 1970), clippings and responses regarding the event; and a radio and a film script based on the event, with related materials. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) papers (1960-1997, bulk 1960s) include reports and memos regarding its history, structure, administration, projects, publications, and broadsides with references to Students for a Democratic Society, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin), Eldridge Cleaver and others; with photocopies of surveillance files on Sellers and the organization obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mississippi State Sovereignty Committee. All African Revolutionary People's Party materials (1972-1989, bulk 1970s) detail its administration, membership levels, its ideology, influenced by the political thought of Kwame Nkrumah, and publications, including those from its program, African Liberation Day. Also in the collection are materials documenting various African countries and movements including copies of major documents of the Sixth Pan African Congress (1974), articles regarding the political philosophy of Ahmed Sekou Toure and a variety of materials from various domestic groups, committees, and organizations involved in Black Power and Pan Africa movements and Civil Rights, including the Black Panthers, Blacks United for Action (Columbia, South Carolina), Congress of African People, National Black United Front and others. School-related organizations include the Student Organization for Black Unity (SOBU), with reports, and memos(1960s-1970s) regarding its organization, goals and administration; various black student groups from a number of American colleges and universities, such as Cornell, Harvard and Duke, with a small amount of information regarding student unrest at Allen University (1967) and Voorhees College (1969), with more significant data (1969-1971) regarding the founding, organization, and administration of Malcolm X Liberation University, first located in Durham, North Carolina; and photocopies of the legal papers documenting Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone's anti-discrimination suit against Univeristy of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. North Carolina related materials include clippings regarding various commemorations of the student Woolworth's Sit-In at Greensboro, NC, (1960) and similar materials regarding the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party attack on the Communist Worker's Party in Greensboro in 1979.

Also included are various drafts of Sellers' dissertation on the Civil Rights movement from 1954-1968. Printed materials include miscellaneous clippings from a variety of sources and newsletters from various organizations, often radical and short-lived. Scattered publications include The Black Panther, The Student Voice, SNCC Newsletter, SOBU Newsletter, The African World, The African Warrior, Black-On (Columbia, South Carolina), The People's Crusader (Atlanta, Georgia), Pan African Roots, New African, and many others; with political broadsides. Photographs of Cleveland Sellers and others including Stokely Carmichael and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.