Another civil rights campaign organisation was the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference). Martin Luther King was the first president of the SCLC with the Reverend Ralph Abernathy as treasurer. They believe in sit-ins at cafeterias and lunch counters that wouldn’t serve Blacks. They did ‘Freedom rides’ challenging segregation on buses and other public accommodations. They also did ‘Freedom summer’ programs to register rural Mississippi Blacks to vote.
Yet another organisation was the SNCC (The Student Non-violent Coordinating committee). AS mentioned in the title of this organisation they are non-violent. Its protest strategy achieved its first major success in 1963 when the group launched a major campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. Highly publicized confrontations between non-violent protestors, including school children, on the one hand, and police with clubs, fire hoses, and police dogs, on the other gained Northern sympathy. This prompted President John F. Kennedy to push for passage of new civil rights legislation. The group played a large part in the freedom rides aimed at desegregating buses and in the marches organized by Martin. L. King and SCLC. They also did Black voter campaigns in the South. Three of its members died at the hands of the KKK during the Mississippi Freedom summer of 1964. Events such as these highlighted divisions between King and the SNCC. In 1996, Stokely Carmichael was elected head of the SNCC and popularised the term black power to characterize the new tactics and goals which include – Black self reliance and the use of violence as a legitimate means of self defence.
Black power is an umbrella term used to describe the more militant aspects of the late 1960s civil rights movement. It became more popular as the leader of the SNCC used it in a series of speeches. The main thrust of the civil rights movement, with its concentration on eliminating segregation and winning the right to vote in the south, had largely ignored the economic problems of Blacks in the Northern Ghettos. That believed that Black communities should strive for self-determination rather than integration and had the right to retaliate against violent attack. Although associated in White eyes with violence, Black power mostly referred to Black self-reliance, racial pride, and economic and political empowerment. This organisation organised Boycotts of the military draft by Blacks, free self-defence training for Black youths, and the partition of the country into separate Black and White nations. But many others attracted to the concept sought to increase the numbers of Black-owned businesses and Black officeholders rather than pursuing extreme separatism. Although Black power advocates achieved only a few of their goals, the idea remained a powerful one in modern Black America.
Amzie Moore and Fannie Lou Hamer were among the grass roots leaders who worked closely with SNCC to build new organisations, such as the MFDP (Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party). It attracted national attention and thus prepared the way for a major upsurge in southern Black political activity. SNCC organizers worked with local leaders in Alabama to create the Lowndes county freedom organisation. The symbol they chose – The Black Panther- reflected the radicalism and belief in racial separatism that increasingly characterised SNCC during the last half of the 1960’s. The Black panther symbol was later adopted by the California based black panther party, formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and bobby Seale.
The SNCC was a non-violent organisation whose policies contradicted the views of the Black panther party who believed that violence was acceptable in the struggle for freedom. They definitely had different views on how equality should be gained.
