Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: A Catalyst for Change
Introduction
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), pronounced "SNICK," emerged as a pivotal force in the American Civil Rights Movement. Founded in April 1960, SNCC distinguished itself as a youth-led organization committed to nonviolent direct action against segregation and racial injustice. This article delves into the history of SNCC, its key leaders, strategies, and its lasting impact on American society.
Origins and Formation
The seeds of SNCC were sown in the burgeoning sit-in movement of the early 1960s, where young Black college students bravely challenged segregation at lunch counters across the South. Inspired by the nonviolent principles of Martin Luther King Jr., these students sought a more direct and confrontational approach to dismantling racial barriers.
Ella Baker, a veteran civil rights organizer and an official with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), recognized the potential of these young activists. She organized a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960, inviting student leaders from various sit-in movements. Over 200 students attended, and Baker encouraged them to form an independent organization, free from the control of established civil rights groups like the SCLC.
At the Raleigh Conference, the students, reluctant to compromise the independence of their local protest groups, voted to establish only a temporary coordinating body. James Lawson, a Vanderbilt University theology student whose workshops on nonviolent direct action served as a training ground for many of the Nashville student protesters, drafted an organizational statement of purpose that reflected the strong commitment to Gandhian nonviolence that characterized SNCC’s early years.
Lawson's statement affirmed "the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and the manner of our action," envisioning "a social order of justice permeated by love." This commitment to nonviolence, rooted in Judaic-Christian traditions, would guide SNCC's early actions and shape its identity.
Read also: Student Accessibility Services at USF
Early Strategies and Actions
SNCC's emergence as a force in the southern civil rights movement came largely through the involvement of students in the 1961 Freedom Rides, designed to test a 1960 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in interstate travel facilities unconstitutional. The Congress of Racial Equality initially sponsored the Freedom Rides that began in May 1961, but segregationists viciously attacked riders traveling through Alabama. Students from Nashville, under the leadership of Diane Nash, resolved to finish the rides.
The Freedom Rides, initially organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), aimed to challenge segregation in interstate transportation. When the rides encountered violent resistance in Alabama, SNCC stepped in to continue the movement. Under the leadership of Diane Nash, students from Nashville bravely faced arrests and brutality, demonstrating their unwavering commitment to desegregation.
By the time the Interstate Commerce Commission began enforcing the ruling mandating equal treatment in interstate travel in November 1961, SNCC was immersed in voter registration efforts in McComb, Mississippi, and a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia, known as the Albany Movement. King and SCLC later joined with SNCC in Albany, but tensions arose between the two civil rights groups.
In addition to the Freedom Rides, SNCC engaged in various direct action campaigns, including sit-ins, boycotts, and "kneel-ins" at segregated churches. These actions aimed to desegregate public facilities and challenge racial discrimination in local communities.
SNCC also recognized the importance of voter registration in empowering Black communities. In 1961, organizer Bob Moses moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and began organizing young Mississippi residents. Moses, who was firmly committed to non-hierarchical grassroots organizing, joined the SNCC staff and became voter registration director of Mississippi’s Council of Federated Organizations the following year. Despite facing intimidation and violence, SNCC workers and local activists persisted in their efforts to register Black voters, laying the groundwork for future political change.
Read also: Guide to UC Davis Student Housing
The Mississippi Project and Freedom Summer
The Mississippi Project, launched in 1964, marked a significant escalation in SNCC's voter registration efforts. SNCC, in coordination with CORE, followed up on the ballot with the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, also known as Freedom Summer. The project brought together SNCC field secretaries, influential regional and local civil rights leaders from Mississippi, and white student volunteers who participated in the “Freedom Vote” mock election of October 1963 and the Freedom Summer (1964).
SNCC's Charlie Cobb proposed summer field schools. Encouraging youth "to articulate their own desires, demands, and questions," the schools would help ensure a movement for social change in the state that would continue to be led by Mississippians. This was, he suggested, what organizing for voter registration was all about - "challenging people in various ways to take control of their own lives."
Over the course of Freedom Summer (and with assistance in developing the curriculum from, among others, Howard Zinn), COFO set up more than 40 Freedom Schools in African-American communities across Mississippi. With the encouragement of SNCC field secretary Frank Smith, a meeting of cotton pickers at a Freedom School in Shaw, Mississippi, gave birth to the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union.
The project aimed to register Black voters and challenge the state's discriminatory political system. However, Freedom Summer was met with fierce resistance, including violence, intimidation, and the tragic murders of three civil rights workers: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Despite the violence, Freedom Summer brought national attention to the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), organized by SNCC, challenged the all-white state delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Fannie Lou Hamer's powerful testimony before the credentials committee exposed the injustices faced by Black Mississippians and galvanized support for voting rights legislation.
Read also: Investigating the Death at Purdue
Internal Conflicts and the Rise of Black Power
The voting rights demonstrations that began in 1965 in Selma, Alabama, sparked increasingly bitter ideological debates within SNCC, as some workers openly challenged the group’s previous commitment to nonviolent tactics and its willingness to allow the participation of white activists. Distracted by such divisive issues, the day-to-day needs of the group’s ongoing projects suffered. In many Deep South communities, where SNCC had once attracted considerable black support, the group’s influence waned.
The events in Selma, along with growing frustration over the slow pace of change, led to internal divisions within SNCC. Some members began to question the effectiveness of nonviolence and the role of white activists in the movement.
In May 1966, Stokely Carmichael's election as chairman marked a turning point in SNCC's history. Carmichael, identifying with the trend away from nonviolence and interracial cooperation, his election compromised SNCC’s relationships with more moderate civil rights groups and many of its white supporters. During the month following his election, Carmichael publicly expressed SNCC’s new political orientation when he began calling for “Black Power” during a voting rights march through Mississippi.
The Black Power movement emphasized Black self-reliance, racial pride, and the need for Black communities to control their own political and economic destinies. While Black Power resonated with many African Americans, it also alienated some of SNCC's white supporters and created further divisions within the organization.
King responded directly to Carmichael’s and SNCC’s appeal for Black Power in his 1967 book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? King argued, “effective political power for Negroes cannot come through separatism”.
Decline and Legacy
Even after the dismissal of a group of SNCC’s Atlanta field workers who called for the exclusion of whites, the organization was weakened by continued internal conflicts and external attacks, along with a loss of northern financial backing.
The election in June 1967 of H. “Rap” Brown as SNCC’s new chair was meant to reduce the controversy surrounding the group. Brown, however, encouraged militancy among urban blacks, and soon a federal campaign against black militancy severely damaged SNCC’s ability to sustain its organizing efforts. The spontaneous urban uprisings that followed the assassination of King in April 1968 indicated a high level of black discontent.
By then, SNCC had little ability to mobilize an effective political force. Its most dedicated community organizers had left the organization, which changed its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee. Although individual SNCC activists played significant roles in politics during the period after 1968, and many of the controversial ideas that once had defined SNCC’s radicalism had become widely accepted among African Americans, the organization disintegrated.
Despite its relatively short lifespan, SNCC left an indelible mark on American history. The organization played a crucial role in advancing the Civil Rights Movement, empowering Black communities, and inspiring future generations of activists.
SNCC's legacy extends beyond its direct achievements. The organization's emphasis on grassroots organizing, participatory democracy, and youth leadership continues to influence social justice movements today. SNCC's work also helped to pave the way for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices and enfranchised millions of African Americans.
SNCC: Continuing Relevance Today
Members of the SNCC Legacy Project have been invited by various young activist groups to be mentors and to participate in events in which they could share their deep experiences, so as to enhance the thinking and social justice work done by those groups.
The SNCC Digital Gateway had two primary purposes: to tell the history of SNCC from the perspective of the activists themselves and to pass their “informational wealth” onto subsequent generations. The site continues to be used by a variety of audiences, from K-12 educators; higher education instructors in a range of interdisciplinary fields, including history, Africana/Black Studies, and digital humanities; to activists, both domestic and international.
The SDG created opportunities to build relationships between the Movement veteran and activists in the larger Movement for Black Lives. Funded by a grant from a Duke alumnus, the Voting Rights Conference brought SNCC veterans and other Movement organizers together with a select group of younger activists from the larger Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) who are currently involved in grassroots organizing (Dream Defenders, BYP [Black Youth Project] 100, United We Dream, Showing Up for Racial Justice [SURJ], NAACP, Young People’s Project (YPP), and several local organizers.).
Through National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding, we convened two sessions of small group discussions related to the nuts and bolts of organizing in SNCC communities. Participants in the history were invited to consider the difficult decisions made and their consequences, as well as other behind-the-scenes information that might be useful to future organizers, since these questions continue to be raised in current organizing. The two sessions were focused on: The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and Freedom Summer and The Emergence of Black Power.
This NEH-funded book project was developed as a guide to understanding voting rights strategies then (1960s) and now, both those that worked and those that didn’t. To ensure that the content will be relevant to current and future organizers, the editorial committee meetings include both SNCC veterans and an even greater number of today’s young organizers.
Through Kellogg funding a one-week session was held for 20 Mississippi public school teachers, focused on teaching a grassroots, bottom-up approach to the southern Civil Rights Movement. A 3-week institute was held at Duke University for 30 teachers (Gr. 7-12). “The Civil Rights Movement: Grassroots Perspectives (1940-1980)” allowed teachers to learn from both Movement activists and scholars and to use primary documents to construct lesson plans. The role of young people and women was highlighted.
The Black Power era from 1966 - 1980 resulted in a sweeping perceptual change in how Black people viewed themselves and how the society viewed them. Voters elected a significant number of Black women and men as public officials across the country, including federal, state and city legislators, and mayors. From James Brown to Hollywood to Alvin Ailey, Black culture was reflected on air and on stages.
SNCC veterans brought the skills, values and worldview they developed in SNCC into many other arenas, including education, theatre, music, political and economic education, union and community organizing, photography and filmmaking, communications, research. Over the years, SNCC veterans have published at least 35 books, on both trade and academic presses, in an attempt to correct the top-down, ahistorical narrative still used to frame the Movement.
tags: #student #nonviolent #coordinating #committee #history #leaders
