October 25, 2011

Bill Hansen, shown here in 2007, was the first director of the Arkansas Project of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a 1960s civil rights organization operating in the South. As a civil rights advocate in Arkansas for about four years, he participated in a number of protest activities. In 1965, he and black comedian Dick Gregory were arrested for attempting to integrate a Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) truck stop. Hansen was initially sentenced to six months in prison and fined $500, but an appeal overturned the conviction.