Brief history of SNCC
The idea was born on February 1, 1960 when four freshman from North Carolina A &T sat at a Woolworth lunch counter and protested the fact that they could not be served. The four young black college students did more than stand up to racial oppression that cold winter day, they sparked a movement that took America’s historically black colleges by storm. Two months later the executive secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) called for a meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina and officially formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC.
SNCC was officially formed at Shaw University in Raleigh during April 1960 after older leaders saw the reaction the Woolworth sit-in had on both blacks and whites in the south. SCLC member Ella Baker decided to create an organization for students who wanted to contribute to the growing civil rights movement. The SCLC, which is still around today, was presided by Dr. Martin Luther King during the time of the formation of SNCC. Members of the organization were mainly protestant black ministers from the south who congregated together to peacefully protest inequality.
The sit-in became the central theme of the student group because of the influence of the SCLC’s focus of non-violent protest. Yet, as we will discuss later, trying to separate themselves from the bureaucratic mess many adult run organizations tend to have, student leaders of SNCC tried to remove any form of a hierarchy and sought unanimity in their decision-making by its members.
Mischievous child
Being a “child” of King’s SCLC, SNCC not only took on the similar agenda but also acquired the same means of pressure on the white society. In the early 1960’s both groups co-operated on various programs, like freedom rides, sit-ins, boycotts.
The purpose of SNCC was to create a society where race would not be a handicap to individuals. This is a common, general view. However, the relationship between the “mother” and her “child” was much more turbulent then it might have seemed on the first sight.
The conflict that ultimately divided SNCC from Dr: King’s Southern Christian Leadership was, according to many members of both groups, present from the very beginning. SCLC leaders envisioned SNCC as a youth branch of SCLC, playing the same role as the NAACP youth division. Nevertheless, the students, supported by Baker, resisted becoming an appendage of Martin Luther King. Although they ardently embraced the philosophy of non-violence, they also asserted their own independence, forming their own autonomous organization. The members, almost all of them students, made it clear that they strive for a “group centered leadership” rather than a “leader-centered” pattern of organization, trying to avoid the struggles for personal leadership by stressing its democratic foundation. This is a clear-cut critique of the SCLC structure and rejection of a prophetic type of leader Dr. King represented for them.
Second source of contention that appeared at the start of SNCC existence was money and raising funds. In its fund-raising efforts, SCLC created the impression that it was heavily involved in student protests. SCLC also pledged to give money to back up these activities. However, SNCC found it very difficult to get a hold of this money. Even though L. King received contributions from New York labor union, to which he was trying to appeal to get the important lobbyists on his side, he only gave something around one-tenth of the sum to SNCC activities.
The further alienation
Speaking of activities again, the SNCC 1961 Baltimore convention widened its field of activities. Besides sit-ins and boycotts, the SNCC members began to be involved in registration of Black voters. Paradoxically, this was instigated by the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He made an attempt to cool-off the radicalism of the SNCC activities and decrease the potential for conflict. The SNCC people involved in it were envisaged to work in terms of laws already on the books to increase the number of Black voters. In return, Kennedy promised to provide federal protection of these registration workers. The promise that he, as it turned out later, fell short of.
The new agenda consisting of a direct experience of SNCC workers in the field, however, not only exacerbated the violent attacks of the white supremacists, but also contributed to widening gap between the students and King’s SCLC. While Kennedy thought that voter registration activities would concentrate on large urban centers, SNCC decided to tackle racism at its very core- in the delta counties of Mississippi and Georgia. They promptly found out that not even the Civil Rights Acts from 1957 and 1960 could guarantee their safety in registering, and that this effort would require great amount of grass-root work. Hard work in Mississippi prompted Freedom Summer in the summer of 1964, where hundreds of college students of all races invaded the state in efforts to register blacks. Both blacks and whites registered 1200 new voters and more “ freedom schools” were established, this time trying to erase the illiteracy that was invading the black community. The efforts of Freedom Summer awakened the country of the disenfranchisement of blacks and helped to influence the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
SNCC against King
It was this diligent grass-root daily hard work which was typical of SNCC while discharging their duties in the south. They experienced what the real life in the black communities was all about with all the brutalities they were inflicted upon as they struggled for equal rights. While gaining this experience, they were finding extremely difficult to associate with the King’s political strategy. The SNCC workers complained about not having been given any official credit whatsoever for their job in the south while King occupied the center stage in the media’s coverage of civil rights. King was nicknamed a political animal or even “a white man’s nigger”, which implied a person who always compromises and appears to be double-faced. As he traveled from city to city, from demonstration to demonstration, the TV cameras and journalists focused on this American Gandhi. While King appealed to the system for reform, SNCC became disenchanted with the system itself and all it represented. He was criticized for making concessions but was it really a deserved critique?
King’s strategy
The growing disparities reflected the differing agendas and perspectives of the two organizations. King with SCLC addressed the wide public, more precisely, nation as a whole. King understood that, if changes were to take place, they have to come from Washington through federal legislation. Consequently, he concentrated on building a strong coalition in order to generate enough pressure so that Congress and the president would be forced to act. This was not an easy goal to achieve. He found himself at the center of many conflicting political forces. In addition to holding an allegiance of African Americans, he was trying to win the support of several external groups essential to the victory he sought. These groups account for organized labor, national religious organizations, intellectuals, white liberals, and last but not least, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His position at the center of such a coalition compelled him to balance the advocacy and compromise. This approach also made him vulnerable, in a sense, to the scorching critique of his opponents from SNCC. Even as King criticized Kennedy administration for inaction, he had to maintain his friendship and lines of communication with the president and Attorney General as well. Another example of how diplomatic King had to be was his stance toward FBI. Although he had many reasons to detest FBI (its agents sent by Robert Kennedy only looked while many African Americans were beaten up when trying to register for vote) he had to soften his criticism of that organization in order not to alienate the trade unions and the white liberal community who perceived federal law enforcement officials as an essential ally. To summarize his approach, if he were to secure the legislation sought, he simply had to abide by the rules of the game. He equally had to maximize the political forces that may support him, and if inevitable, temper his own demands and allow others to shape his agenda in order not to alienate a potential ally. This strategy that, in my opinion, deserves a big recognition, was not fully understood by the representatives of SNCC who were not in connection to the decision-making centers and saw compromising as betrayal to their set agenda. The direct confrontation at the larger scale between the two perspectives happened at the occasion of preparation of March to Washington, in August 1963. John Lewis, SNCC’s chairman who was to deliver a speech denouncing Kennedy administration’s record of inaction, declaring the revolutionary, sweeping march through “Dixie” and attacking both major political parties for failing to prevent the horrible Black conditions in the South. However, on the day of the march, Lewis was told to temper his position, because should he say what he had originally planned, neither church nor labor, nor white liberal representatives would appear on the same stage with him. Lewis finally complied, but this incident was a clear sign for SNCC that they are loosing their grip on the civil rights agenda due to King’s compromises and remoteness to the real living conditions of the Deep South. Although the whole “enterprise” was a big success for the Civil Rights fighters, and there was no apparent sign of cleavage from the outside, the march added to the SNCC concerns of what could happen if outsiders attempted to shape their agenda and define their options. Not only had the march created an artificially rosy optimism about race relations in America; it had also succeeded in denying SNCC control over its own voice.
Journey to Black Power
The different perspectives and ways of tackling racial discrimination and segregation resulted finally in escalation of the breach between SNCC and SCLC. The last straw turned out to be the hotly debated move of SNCC to recruit white volunteers to come to Mississippi to participate in the Freedom Summer Campaign in 1964. SNCC believed that only through exposing white America to suffering equal to what the Black members experienced could mobilize the nation’s will to act. “We couldn’t bring all of white America to Mississippi, but by bringing in some of its children as volunteer workers, a new consciousness, would feed back into the homes of thousands of white Americans. We recognize that the result might be great pain and sorrow, but we were not asking that whites do any more than we had done.” In the beginning, the co-operation seemed to have been almost ideal. However, the educated and sophisticated white student coming from economically secure milieus found it natural to take over tasks carried out previously by blacks, like writing press releases, running freedom schools, or coordinating logistics. Many Blacks began to feel inferior in the presence of white college students from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. A classical example of this tension is SNCC experience with Allard Lowenstein, a charismatic politician and a liberal crusader, traveling from one place to another in a quest of social reform. After a certain time, he assumed a leading position and suggested that the SNCC headquarters move from Mississippi to New York City to get rid of the “leftist” label SNCC acquired over the years. This, as well as similar actions were perceived as further obliteration of the groups identity and led to marginalization of white say and later on, to their expulsion.
The final brake came a year later in Mississippi as well. It was after selecting as a head a staunch believer in radical stream within SNCC, Stokeley Carmichael. He not only sacked the white students from the ranks of organization, but he also took advantage of James Meredith’s disastrous solo march across Mississippi, which ended by her murder. Carmichael knew how dissatisfied the members are and called for violent retaliation. His words: “The time for running has come to an end….Black Power. It is time we stand up and take over; move on over or we will move on over you,” drowned out King’s call for “Freedom now” and non-violent action. Shifting SNCC to violent agenda and rioting, SNCC joined in with their counterparts from the North, especially with Black Muslim movement represented by the disciple of Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X.
Conclusion
What did the radicalization of a part of the Civil Rights movement mean? Over all, it did harm to it, there is no doubt about it. After it had attained the Voting right Act in 1965, it failed to continue in the same line. Radical riots that became more and more frequent detracted from the earnestness of the movement and erased the image of African Americans being victims of racial discrimination, which was getting more and more engrained in white people’s minds. Violence made white people lose this awareness, so meticulously cultivated by King. On the other hand, the seemingly unrelenting approach of certain institutions, both state and federal, made Blacks lose their faith in them. Hence, the lost of faith turned from the white individuals at the beginning, while still believing in American institutions and their ideals, to complete mistrust to those in the mid 1960’s. This represented a very important shift in Black perspectives. They experienced that flaws were not only in white people who were trying to deny them living the American dream. The new view shared by young militant Afro-Americans is that the white people embedded their personal flaws so deeply into the institutions that those institutions are beyond redemption. King’s non-violent approach was genuine, I dare say, second to none. On the other hand, there is no doubt that violent beatings and murders inflicted upon members of any of the Civil Right’s organization, including SNCC, who helped to improve their position in society, generates violence as well. It is difficult to bear all the injustices and not to retaliate in the same manner. Taking all this into consideration, I have to pay tribute to the King’s strategy of non-violence, which bear fruit, and which was able to rally many followers ready to serve a good matter. Although both SCLC and SNCC were created under different conditions and their opinion divergence seemed to be wide, they both contributed to the major achievements of the movement, Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 and gained worldwide reverence and recognition.
Literature:
W. H. Chafe: The Unfinished Journey, Oxford University Press. 1999. p 311-320.
H.Sitkoff: The Struggle for Black Equality 1954-1980. Hill and Wang, N.Y. 1981, p. 208-250.
James Farmer: Lay Bare the Heart. 1986. p 296-275.
Internet links:
http://www.kcsclc.org/SCLC%20About%20page.htm
http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/
http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/
Roberta Hughes Wright, The Birth of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Southfield: Charro Press, 1991) 52-53.
W. H. Chafe: The Unfinished Journey, Oxford University Press. 1999. p 311
H.Sitkoff: The Struggle for Black Equality 1954-1980. Hill and Wang, N.Y. 1981, p. 208
W. H. Chafe: The Unfinished Journey, Oxford University Press. 1999, p.317
James Farmer: Lay Bare the Heart. 1986. p 296
