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'''Maria Varela''' (born January 1, 1940) is an [[Community organizing|organizer]], photographer and educator best known for her work with the [[Civil Rights Movement]] in the American South and the [[Alianza Federal de Mercedes|Land Grant Movement]] of New Mexico. Her photography has appeared in numerous museums, galleries and institutions across the country.
==Work in the Southern Civil Rights Movement==
Varela worked as an organizer, educator, writer, and photographer as a [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC) staff member from 1963 to 1967, working first in Selma, Alabama, and then across the Black Belt South. Raised Catholic by her Mexican father and Irish mother, Varela first got involved in the Catholic social justice movement by joining the Young Christian Students (YCS) in high school and then again in college. After graduating from [
Through this work, Varela met Casey Hayden, who recruited her in early 1963 to work for SNCC in the Atlanta Office. This changed when [[Bernard Lafayette]] and Frank Smith, who had recently had worked in Selma, asked that Varela be assigned to work, instead, in Selma to support one of Selma's civil rights leaders, Father Maurice Ouellet, the pastor of the Black Catholic Parish. Ouellet was a strong supporter of the Movement and had opened his buildings to classes and meetings. He also made repeated requests for a literacy project to assist with voter registration.
Dissatisfied with the white middle class portrayals in literacy materials, Varela began creating materials that reflected Black people's lifestyles. After the notorious Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark shut the [[Selma, Alabama|Selma]] program down by arresting Varela's project staff, she moved to Mississippi (where she herself was arrested several times) and spent the next three years responding to SNCC organizers' requests for adult education and training materials.
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