Folklorist and civil rights worker Worth W. Long died on May 8, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 89. His lifelong dedication to community-centered research and support of musicians, artists, and activists throughout the US South, combined with his documentation of traditions of community organizing, offer vital keys to our understanding of movements for social justice rooted in African American history and culture.From his birth in Durham, North Carolina, in 1936, Worth's life and work were centered in Southern culture. Before studying at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, he served in the US Air Force in Korea and Japan, where he first became aware of the field of folklore. To broaden his life experiences, Worth worked as a medic at the Little Rock Air Force Base and at Duke University.A civil rights activist as early as 1956, Worth was a leading organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), particularly in Alabama, including both Birmingham and Selma. Building upon these experiences, Worth became involved in documenting and presenting the folk music of the movement at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and other heritage festivals throughout the South, including the Mississippi Delta Blues Festival, the Knoxville World's Fair in 1982, and the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996.After Worth met Roland Freeman, a cultural documentarian and photographer, at the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Folklife Programs in 1974, the two of them forged a formidable partnership. Together, they documented the Civil Rights Movement for social and racial justice dating to the 1963 March on Washington. Their visual and aural records have become invaluable and essential for understanding African American cultural life. Their pioneering work in the 1970s as co-directors of the Mississippi Folklife Project for the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage resulted in the book Southern Roads, City Pavements: Photographs of Black Americans (International Center of Photography, 1981). This project also led to the global recognition of African American improvisational quilting traditions through publications and exhibitions such as Freeman's Something to Keep You Warm (The Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1981) and A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories (Rutledge Hill Press, 1996). These projects in turn inspired the Gee's Bend quilt exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and many other venues.Worth's endeavors in oral history were forms of activism. He brought to his autoethnographic work his experiences of growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (where his father was a preacher), participating in numerous community-based organizing efforts. Worth's passion for studying and presenting community organizing as occupational folklore was matched by his fervor for documenting the versatile repertoires of blues and gospel musicians, which he shared in narrative sessions at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and interviews at the Library of Congress. Thanks to Worth's passion for documenting traditions of community organizing, we hold vital keys to understanding movements for social justice rooted in African American history and culture. He will be greatly missed.Essays authored by and about Worth's work and the impact of his life along with live recordings of his words can be found on the SNCC digital archive website: https://snccdigital.org/people/worth-long/.
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