Scope and Content Note
The papers of Elizabeth (Betita) Sutherland Martínez (1925- ) span the years 1964-1998 with the bulk of the material dating from 1964 to 1970. The majority of the collection documents Martínez’s activities as a civil rights activist while a member of the Student Nonviolent Committee (SNCC), during the 1960s and her endeavors in helping James Forman, also a civil rights activist and SNCC member, with some of his writing projects. The papers are in English and are arranged by type of material.
The collection consists chiefly of correspondence between Martínez and Forman. The correspondence provides insight into the internal workings of SNCC, particularly the New York office where Martínez mainly worked, and conveys details about the difficulties in doing public relations and fund-raising for the organization, the future direction of SNCC, and discussions about anti-white feelings of some of the African-American members of SNCC toward white members of the organization. The correspondence also includes copies of diary entries that Forman would send as letters to friends and members of SNCC. Some of the letters from 1968-1970 relate to exchanges between the two about the writing of Forman’s autobiography, Making of Black Revolutionaries: A Personal Account, and other writing projects. The papers also contain a few outgoing letters from Martínez to Marion Barry, Betty Garman Robinson, and Julian Bond. Also in the papers is a 1998 letter from Martínez to Manning Marable about black radicalism. The papers include notes by Martínez about writing projects and a small amount of material relating to Forman’s book, Sammy Younge, Jr.: The First Black College Student to Die in the Black Liberation Movement. The miscellany file consists of a speech by Forman and a reprint of an article about him from the Times of Zambia.