Jack Minnis, SNCC research director, spoke in San Francisco in 1966. The only white staff member,
Minnis was key to SNCC organizing during the freedom rides and black voter registration campaign. His movements monitored by state police in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, Minnis conducted opposition research training in the Southern "black belt" at a time when SNCC volunteers were beaten, shot, fire-bombed and lynched by police and the Ku Klux Klan.