Masarykova univerzita v Brně Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Bakalářská diplomová práce

VIII. Aftermath

There were extraordinary changes taking place within SNCC and these both predated and followed from the passage of the bill. Due to the limitations of the thesis, I cannot proceed to give a full account of how SNCC slowly but surely vanished. I shall, however, outline the principal reasons of its disintegration.

As a matter of fact, many SNCC and CORE activists operating in the Deep South had by 1964 rejected nonviolence as the one and only means. Though the founding statements of both organizations pledged adherence to nonviolence as the core of their philosophy, many workers became to think otherwise. Both groups became engaged in internal debates concerning the plausibility of self-defense. The change of mood stemmed from the actual experience in the field. The staffers coming to work with southern black communities in the Delta found much of the constituency willing practitioners of armed self-defense. (Umoja: 562)

The promotion of indigenous leadership in the communities which had for decades relied on armed self-defense made it difficult to retain nonviolence as the only tactic. The material survival of the workers largely depended on their “informal absorption” into the community. In the dangerous battlefields of rural Mississippi, their bare lives were often saved thanks to indigenous armed militants. SNCC could not completely condemn the methods of its grassroots constituency and seek to boost their initiative at the same time. (Umoja: 569-570)

To veteran leaders such as John Lewis and Diane Nash, who came to embrace nonviolence through the religious teachings of Rev. James Lawson, nonviolence was a philosophy and way of life. But fewer and fewer SNCC workers shared their attitude, having lost faith in tactics that necessitated changing the hearts of white southerners. Their disillusionment with nonviolent moral suasion was dilated by countless instances of white barbarity. At best, they viewed nonviolence as a useful but not the sole strategy. Many leaders (most notably Nash) who took hard stance on nonviolence eventually deserted to King’s SCLC. By 1966, SNCC and CORE openly advocated self-defense as a “natural and inalienable right.”⁶¹ (Jeffries: 175; Umoja: 563)

Yet in November 1964, SNCC staff met in Waveland, MS, in urgent need to define the role of whites within the group. Thirty-seven position papers circulated before the meeting and nothing was sacred. A number of organizers argued that their experience in Mississippi taught them that working with whites was not only unnecessarily dangerous – it also crippled racial solidarity. Despite fervent discussion, no consensus was reached and the organization was left in turmoil. (Jeffries: 177)

In the period that followed the Voting Rights Act, most of SNCC’s projects in the Deep South were “either dead or dying.” (Stoper: 27) The absence of any blueprint led several veterans to leave. The most remarkable of them, Bob Moses withdrew from SNCC decision-making soon after the Democratic National Convention and eventually resigned.

The only viable project that remained was the so-called Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) founded by Stokely Carmichael. After the conflict with the SCLC in Selma, a group of secretaries moved to the surrounding countryside, “where they [SCLC] would not come.” (Jeffries: 179) Carmichael conceived it as an independent, exclusively local political body which, in order to win public offices, would not have to compromise with whites. He went on educating and cooperating with the local leaders and by December 1965, they announced the formation of the LCFO, with a black panther as its symbol. SNCC as a whole still lacked an action plan. As the LCFO seemed the only successful effort, most of the Committee’s thinning resources went into the Lowndes project. (Jeffries)

At the May 1966 meeting in Kingston Springs, TN, some 150 members elected Carmichael as new chairman. Accounts vary: some scholars suggested that it was a takeover. More importantly, the staff gave formal expression to the expulsion of whites. “Although Stokely was my friend and mentor, I voted for John Lewis in Kingston Springs because I saw SNCC on its deathbed if race became the defining criterion,” said Jim Benston, then an organizer in Greene County.⁶² The decisions adopted at Kingston Springs provided for the basis of the new SNCC organizing program dubbed “Black Power.” Although SNCC defined the slogan quite clearly – as developing grassroots, independent political parties and promoting black consciousness⁶³ - much controversy was sparked after it was announced. Black Power emerged directly from their organizing experience in Lowndes County and represented an honest attempt by Carmichael to return the organization to its roots. In short, Black Power was not something that somebody had said or written, but what SNCC accomplished in Lowndes. However, civil rights moderates (the NAACP) condemned the declaration and the responsible media were bewildered and misinterpreted the meaning attached to the slogan, making it a call for repudiating the principles of the American democracy. White liberals stopped funding the groups that promoted it: SNCC and CORE.

According to Stoper, SNCC’s collapse started with the defeat of the MFDP at the Democratic National Convention and continued with the sudden influx of hundreds of white students and the resultant crisis, the Committee’s inability to get on well with other black civil rights organizations and finally, the loss of funding. (19)

When its financial base disappeared, SNCC sought to survive through alliances with other groups and simultaneously tried to shift its base to the urban North. But it faced harsh difficulties: there was a tough struggle for recruits with other groups. The proposed association with CORE into a new body in 1967 broke down and the alliance with the urban-based Black Panther Party lasted for only five months, resulting in a violent dissolution. “Like a delicate plant, it was not easily transplanted into new soil.” (Stoper: 28)
In 1967, Carmichael abandoned SNCC to join the Black Panthers. In 1969, his long interest and sympathy for Pan-Africanism led him to leave the United States for Africa for good. The group lastly disbanded in 1970. (McCormack)


Conclusion

The youngsters in SNCC were far from being infallible. No, they did make mistakes, but it only makes them more human. In their belief in true equality and redemption, and in their vehement impatience, they became the prime movers of the movement, an embodiment of dynamism, the movement inside a movement.

The Committee rewarded its members with a sense of total universe and purpose which invited their full commitment to the cause. It communicated an alternative, uncompromising vision of America. (Stoper)

Their becoming crucial participants during the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides consequentially led to their assuming the central role in designing and carrying out the major initiatives of the movement as a whole. Because of their stubborn insistence on their ideals and principles, young revolutionaries in SNCC could not fully appreciate the practical victories they had won and steadily alienated themselves from the movement.

At the same time, their frustration joined hands with their pioneering spirit and expressed itself in a new vision of self-sufficient black America. This, however, was far too radical for the mainstream politicians and civil rights moderates. That was the definite beginning of the end. SNCC adopted a course to which it possibly could not keep without outside help. Unwilling to concede its values, it sought alliances with militants which did not work out. After lengthy agonizing, it faded out of existence.

Yes, the youngsters in SNCC were the soldiers of freedom fighting on the frontline. They’d learned the hard lessons in the many towns of the land of Jim Crow. Through their unshakable belief in the ordinary man, they’d accomplished what they envisioned: the rise of indigenous leadership (most notably Fannie Lou Hamer). From its midst, SNCC produced the architects of the most ambitious projects: Bob Moses employed his genius as director first of the Freedom Ballot, then the Freedom Summer. Simultaneously, Moses worked for the unity of purpose in COFO which consisted of all the African American civil rights groups, even though SNCC had never had a harmonious relationship with the “elders” in the movement. The indigenous leadership (most notably Fannie Lou Hamer, Ed King and Victoria Gray) that SNCC helped create then took over the responsibility for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the one victorious attempt at penetrating high politics. A victory for one may be a defeat for the other. SNCC, in distress over the flood of newcomers, eventually withdrew from the front-page news, but without several years of its unrelenting effort in Selma, Alabama, Martin Luther King would have a hard time finding a mass of ready-to-go protesters for his marches to Montgomery in 1965.

By these many examples, the thesis clearly demonstrates that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee played an irreplaceable role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Appendix

Sit-in at Woolworth’s on May 28, 1963, in Jackson, MS. One of the most publicized sit-ins. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgcoll.htm)

Nashville Movement organizers Bernard LaFayette (aisle) and Jim Lawson (seated behind him) on the bus to Jackson, MS, with National Guard troopers standing guard. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgcoll.htm)

White thugs beat civil rights workers Paul Potter and Tom Hayden on a downtown street in McComb, MS, 1961. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgms.htm)

A segregated drinking fountain in a county courthouse in Albany, Georgia. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgga.htm)

Trying to register. Notice the board on the wall. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgms.htm)

“Freedom House” in Hollis Springs, MS. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgfs.htm)

Bob Moses, Atlantic City Convention, 1964. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgfs.htm)

Fannie Lou Hamer singing at a MFDP rally. From left to right: Emory Harris, Stokely Carmichael (in hat), Sam Block, Eleanor Holmes, Ella Baker. (http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgfs.htm)

Civil Rights Movement Veterans, a web site. <http://crmvet.org>