Dean Savage Papers

The Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project was an initiative of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), directed by Hosea Williams based on a call from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for northern students to participate in the civil rights activities in the south.

Taking place in the summer of 1965, the SCOPE project aimed to expand on the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign sponsored by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) the previous year. After an initial orientation in Atlanta, Georgia, SCOPE volunteers, consisting of around 500 predominantly white students from universities in the north and west, travelled to rural and urban communities all over the southern states, many staying in the homes of local African American families.

Often at risk of arrest and violence, SCOPE volunteers collaborated with local individuals and groups to lead voter registration drives, hold information sessions, and assist with other community organization efforts.

Dean Savage was born and raised in Washington State. He attended Stanford University, obtaining his bachelor’s degree in History in 1963. He was a graduate student at Columbia University in 1965 when Jim Shenton, lauded history professor at Columbia, recruited a group of students from Columbia to join SCOPE and volunteer in the south for the summer.

Savage was posted along with other Columbia volunteers to Orangeburg, South Carolina, where he spent the summer working to increase voter registration among African Americans. The SCOPE project was one in a series of civil rights initiatives in which Dean participated, starting with a demonstration outside a Woolworth’s in Palo Alto, California in support of the original Woolworth’s sit-in at Greensboro, South Carolina in 1960.

He remained active throughout the decade, and to this day continues to advocate for equality through his scholarly work.

Savage obtained his masters’ degree in History and his Ph.D. in Sociology, both at Columbia University, completing his studies in 1975. Savage is currently a Professor of Sociology at Queens College where he has taught since 1971. He has served as the Department Chair of Sociology and currently teaches a senior seminar on “Inequality in Higher Education.”