Activist Lanny Kaufer To Join 60th Anniversary of SCOPE Voting Initiative

Reunion to Join Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Alabama to Commemorate Civil Rights Movement

“Two Minute Warning” — Hosea Williams and John Lewis meet the Alabama State Troopers on Edmund Pettus Bridge | Photo: Spider Martin/Briscoe Center for American History

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) Project. Now reorganized as SCOPE50, this year’s reunion is being led in part by former SCOPE participant and life-long activist Lanny Kaufer to bring participants to Montgomery, Alabama, during the weekend of March 8 and 9 to celebrate their work in the project as well as join the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee for the 60th anniversary of the Selma March.

“I’m really excited about joining,” Kaufer said. “And just to be part of that history.” His involvement with the Civil Rights Movement is highlighted by his participation in the 1965 SCOPE project, which was announced by Martin Luther King Jr. to increase voter registration in the South.

Lanny Kaufer performing for the Thacher School student body on Martin Luther King Day | Photo: Thacher School

Since high school, Kaufer has been involved in activist groups and during the spring quarter of his first year at UCSB, Rev. Hosea Williams from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to campus to recruit students. Kaufer, his roommate Phil McKenna, and six other UCSB students helped to form the SCOPE chapter at the university where they prepared to spend their summer.