Charles McLaurin
{{Short description|American civil rights organizer}}
Charles McLaurin (born in 1941) is an American civil rights organizer.{{Cite web|url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/charles-mclaurin/|title=McLaurin, Charles|website=Mississippi Encyclopedia}} He moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, in 1962 as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to help alleviate injustices and expose the activities of James Eastland against African Americans.{{Cite book |last=Moye |first=J. Todd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WrbqCQAAQBAJ&dq=%22the+message+from+mississippi%22+film&pg=PP7 |title=Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945-1986 |date=2006-03-08 |publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-8078-7670-1 |language=en}} He helped register African Americans to vote and was part of the Freedom Summer movement. His efforts met with retribution and violence. He worked with Fannie Lou Hamer. He was jailed.{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-at50-charles-mclaurin-foot-soldier/|title=Charles McLaurin - "The Foot Soldier" | American Experience | PBS|website=www.pbs.org}}
He wrote notes on organizing.{{Cite web|url=https://repository.duke.edu/dc/richardsonjudy/jrpst002028|title=Notes on organizing by Charles McLaurin / Judy Richardson Papers / Duke Digital Repository|website=Duke Digital Collections}} He later lived in Indianola.{{Cite web|url=https://snccdigital.org/people/charles-mclaurin/|title=Charles McLaurin}}
The PBS show American Experience includes a segment where he revisits towns in rural Mississippi he worked in organizing voters. He was interviewed in 2015.[https://www.loc.gov/item/2016655412/ Charles McLaurin oral history interview conducted by Emilye Crosby in Indianola, Mississippi, 2015 December 05.]