Northern Student Movement

[1] Countryman began NSM's work by collecting books for a predominantly African-American college and raising funds for SNCC.

[3] NSM also encouraged direct-action protests, sending volunteers to sit-ins in the South and organizing rent strikes in the North.

“In the Roxbury-South End area of Boston, NSM led a voter registration drive, preschool programs, and a Black history workshop.” In Philadelphia, a Northern Student Movement freedom library was started to “have books by and about black people.”[7] The NSM had 50 fulltime employees with different sources reporting of somewhere between 2,200-2,500 college student volunteers.

Bill Strickland, the second executive director of the NSM, was the leadman in “rent strikes, school boycotts, and neighborhood-initiated community projects”.

The records of the Northern Student Movement, including a complete run of its periodical, Freedom North, are on file with the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division of the New York Public Library.