March From Selma, Alabama to Montgomery

King moved from mass meetings to direct action in mid-January when he led four hundred marchers to the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma.³⁰¹

At the beginning of February 1965, James Orange from the SCLC went to Marion County Alabama to work in the voting rights movement there. Each day blacks would go down to the courthouse to register to vote. They would be arrested. In an effort to stop Blacks, the local sheriff arrested Orange on February 17^th. In response, the local blacks decided to hold a night march. They would go to jail and sing songs to Orange.³⁰²

The Mayor of Marion, Alabama called Governor George Wallace and told him African-Americans were planning to break Orange out of jail and cause a riot. Wallace sent state troopers and deputized many white men in the area. Sheriff Jim Clark sealed off all roads to Marion and no one could get in or out. African-American women were beaten at the will of the racists that night.
Voting rights demonstrators were viciously attacked. Jimmy Lee Jackson who was trying to protect his grandfather and his mother, who was bleeding after being beaten, was murdered. After the three of them fled to a building with the police in hot pursuit, Jackson died in the hospital on February 26^th, five days after Malcolm X was assassinated. The movement decided to carry Jimmy Lee Jackson’s dead body to Montgomery and to drop it on the steps of the Capital, but Dr. King had a better suggestion; that was to lead to a mass march from Selma to Montgomery. SCLC scheduled the march from Selma to Montgomery for Sunday, March 7.³⁰³
SNCC thought the march was too dangerous and voted as an organization not to endorse the march but said any member of the organization could take part in the march if they wanted to. As the march proceeded on March 7^th to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, it was stopped by a posse of a 100 men under the command of Selma’s Jim Clark and a 100 state troopers sent by Alabama Governor George Wallace. The state troopers on horseback began to beat and tear gas the marchers. They also rode over the marchers as they were beaten. This was called “Bloody Sunday.”
The march was forced to turn back. Dr. King issued a national appeal to come to Selma. The second attempted march was scheduled for March 1965. Dr. King led the march but was told the march did not have a permit. Dr. King led 1,500 marchers to the crest of the Edmund Pettus Bridge turned around unmolested by state troopers waiting there and marched back to Selma. SNCC called this “Turnaround Tuesday.” SCLC secured a permit and on March 1, 1965, the March from Selma to Montgomery proceeded. The march took five days and covered 54 miles. Few marched the whole distance. Many only marched part of the way. By the march’s end in Montgomery 25,000 people had joined. Dr. King gave a very militant speech, which signaled that the movement was shifting.
1965-1966 The Lowndes County Freedom Organization: The Black Panther Party

In late 1965 and early 1966, SNCC decided to go into Alabama and organize an independent black political party.

SNCC’s plans were shaped in part by its experiences in the MFDP 1964 convention challenge and the 1965 seating challenge, both of which ended in failure. This new effort, SNCC decided would be a county political organization rather than a statewide organization such as MFDP. “We decided,” said a SNCC field secretary, “after the Mississippi experience that it would be better for political organizations to be on the county level so they could be closer to the people. ³⁰⁴

In January 1966 before launching the Lowndes County Freedom Organizations (LCFO), SNCC encouraged a group of African-American voters to sue in federal court for a special election in 1966 for all Lowndes County administrative, law enforcement, and judicial offices.

The suit contended that white officials were holding office illegally because they had been elected before the state’s Negroes had acquired the right to vote. The suit stated that, although some county officials were up for election in 1966, the terms of others continued until 1968 and 1970. In essence, this challenge rested on the contention that the white minority, under sanction of the law and by threats, terror, and violence, had prevented Negroes from even attempting to exercise their suffrage rights, in violation not only of the Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, but of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as well. ³⁰⁵
In March of 1965 SNCC field workers led by senior field secretary Stokely Carmichael went in Lowndes County to solicit the aid of local leaders in getting support for the idea of organizing an all African-American political party in a majority African-American southern black-belt area. Carmichael arrived in Lowndes County on March 26, 1965. The SNCC research staff found a state law that allowed for the establishment of independent county political parties, provided they had a membership equal to 20 percent of the county’s eligible voters. By August 1965, Stokely Carmichael had managed to register 250 people. ³⁰⁶

The Alabama Democratic Conference (ADC) and the Alabama Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) announced plans of running African-Americans in the Democratic Party May primary. SNCC proposed a statewide boycott of the primary and to run a concurrent mock primary. The Alabama SCLC felt this would hurt the chances of African-American candidates and called on Dr. Martin Luther King for help. Dr. King came to Alabama and traveled the state for SCLC urging African-Americans to vote in the Democratic primary but stayed clear of Lowndes County, SNCC’s proposed project.

On March 3, 1966, African-Americans in the process of developing local leadership founded the Lowndes County Freedom Organization led by John Hullet. In Lowndes County, African-Americans, 80% of the county, agreed to boycott the regular Democratic primary and support candidates of the newly found Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in their own primary. LCFO as an all African-American political party choose a black panther as its symbol.³⁰⁷
SNCC also attempted to help build several other African-American freedom organizations in some of the other black belt counties (near or majority African-American) in Alabama. Problems of having lack of financial resources and with its key personnel focused on

Lowndes County hindered the process. Though sporadic, non-coordinated and limited, SNCC did help to register some African-Americans, organized mass meetings, helped some African-American candidates obtain information on how to run for political office and gave some assistance in campaigning. In Lowndes County tax assessor, tax collector, coroner, sheriff, and district attorney were five offices that were at stake in the November, 1966 election. Nine hundred voters showed up to vote for the Black Panther (LCFO) in the primary. By Election Day SNCC had been able to register 2,000 African-Americans. ³⁰⁸

In the interview with Don Stone (Atlanta Project activist) he contradicted Julian Bond who said the Atlanta Project didn’t accomplish much. According to Stone the Atlanta Project helped Bond get re-elected by doing house to house canvassing in the buttermilk bottom section of Atlanta, put out the Nitty Gritty local community newspaper, began Anti-War demonstrations and raised the question of black consciousness within SNCC and the community. ³¹⁰

The Atlanta Project began in February 1966 when Julian Bond was dismissed from the Georgia State legislature for supporting SNCC’s anti-Vietnam statement. In a special election Julian Bond was re-elected. Judy Richardson, office manager for Bond’s campaign, in an interview October 15, 2000 felt that the Atlanta Project had not been involved in the Julian Bond campaign and did not see them in a favorable light at that point. ³¹¹

The leadership of the Atlanta Project engaged in a two-line struggle. One consisted of urban organizing of maintaining door-to-door contact with grassroots people in Atlanta and two, consisted of an internal ideological struggle within SNCC over its direction. Between February and March of 1966 the Atlanta Project published two issues of their newspaper, the Nitty Gritty. The Atlanta Project also circulated their “Black Consciousness” paper. Mike Simmons in an interview said that members of the Alabama Project which eventually formed the Lowndes County Freedom Organization or the Black Panther Party, saw the ideological struggle raised by the Atlanta Project’s, “black consciousness” paper in the spring of 1966 as a struggle to determine who was going to run the organization.³¹² The Atlanta Project was not trying to seize power in the organization. Their only purpose was to influence the leaders and membership of the organization (SNCC) to become a black organization and to consider black nationalism as an option. The Atlanta Project concentrated on four areas of organizing. They were:

1. 
   Working with workers in Atlanta. The Atlanta Project worked with dry cleaners trying to form a union.
   
2. 
   Using the Vine City area of Atlanta as their base, the Atlanta Project worked with tenants in Vine City and Dixie Hills area of the city in covering rent strikes.
   
3. 
   Through electoral activity of getting Julian Bond re-elected to the Georgia legislature, the Atlanta Project began to see themselves as independents and began to advocate the development of a third political party through a petition for one.
   
4. 
   The Atlanta Project held several rallies against police brutality. The Atlanta Project organized mass rallies in low-income housing projects having SNCC leaders speak while playing “James Brown” over loud speakers. The activity of the Atlanta Project began to polarize contradictions in and among the SNCC leadership. Mike Simmons said that Bob Moses was beginning to side with the Atlanta Project at the confrontational meeting with the SNCC steering committee. At the time of the annual staff meeting held in Kingston, Tennessee in June of 1966, members which voted Stokely Carmichael in as chairman of SNCC, members of the Atlanta Project were attending a meeting organized by Bob Moses in New Orleans on Black Nationalism which featured Dr. John Henrik Clarke as guest speaker.
   

Members of SNCC began to receive draft notices. Mike Simmons of Atlanta Project was one of them. Simmons went through six months of evasion not to take a physical for the draft.

After their release from jail, Larry Fox and Mike Simmons began to move around the country to form an anti-war network, which included incorporating African-American women in anti-draft counseling and ministers to ordain people. ³¹³

One of the many events that may have caused SNCC to think about changing it’s policy of having whites work within the pre-dominantly African-American communities in the south

was the murders of Reverend Jon Daniels and Father Richard Morrisroe in the town of Haynesville in Lowndes County, Alabama on August 20, 1965. Rev. Daniels was arrested with a group of about thirty SNCC demonstrators who were picketing against Jim Crow policies at three local stores in Fort Deposit, the largest town in Lowndes County. The demonstrators were taken to jail in Hayneville. As SNCC supporters were attempting to raise bail, the demonstrators were set up according to Gloria House, “we were put out of jail.”

...suddenly on Friday afternoon, without warning, and without prior notification to associates who would have picked them up, the civil rights prisoners were told they were free. No bail had been paid. The Chief Deputy ordered them out of jail and out of the county. ³¹⁴
Gloria House further recalls:

We asked to go back to jail but weren’t allowed in. As people went to make phone calls, and several of us went to the store, a man came up and shot the two white priests who were with us.³¹⁵

Since we had been in jail and really hadn’t any food to eat or anything to drink – we had been eating pork rind and horrible biscuits and whatever, some of us thought, “Let’s walk to the little store here and get a drink, have some ice cream.” We headed to a corner store. Just as we turned onto the main street of Haynesville, gunfire broke out, and we realized the gunfire was coming in our direction. The youngsters, of course, started running everywhere, and some of us just fell on the ground. Ruby Sales and I had been walking with Jonathan Daniels, and we fell there on the ground. Jonathan was hit and we think he must have died immediately. Father Richard Morrisroe, the only other white member of the group, was also hit. He did not die, but he moaned and groaned and moaned and groaned in a horrible way that none of us who were there will ever forget. It seemed to me it was hours before anyone appeared on this road in Haynesville.”³¹⁶

SNCC members had great expectations for the May 1966 SNCC retreat in Kingston Springs, Tennessee. There were concerns about the discussion of SNCC projects and the holding of election of SNCC officers. People had been aroused and polarized by the “black consciousness” paper circulated by the Atlanta Project and its call to turn SNCC into an all-African-American organization. There was a split in SNCC between the “old school” integrationist, SNCC members and the “new school”, militant black nationalists. The black nationalists were advocates of non-violent direct action but combined with defensive self-defense (violence). The integrationists represented by John Lewis believed in non-violence both as a tactic and some as a philosophy and favored keeping SNCC as a multi-racial organization. Stokely Carmichael represented a successful all African-American project in Lowndes County, Alabama. As an organizer, Carmichael was known as one of SNCC’s best. He ran against Lewis for chairman of SNCC.

Early in the emotional conference, by a vote of 60 to 22, John Lewis, the gentle advocate of non-violence, retained the chairmanship of SNCC by defeating the challenge of the militant Stokely Carmichael. But as the conference went on, the arguments of the militants began to prevail. When the staff voted to boycott the coming White House Conference on Civil Rights, Lewis announced that he would attend anyway and the question of the chairmanship was reopened. This time SNCC workers chose Carmichael as their new leader by a vote of 60 to 12.³¹⁷
The conference represented a major shift in political emphasis for SNCC. SNCC reemphasized its opposition to the Vietnam War around January 1966 and called for African-Americans to begin building independent political, economic and cultural institutions to be used as instruments for social change in the country. SNCC began to take one organizer’s emphasis that SNCC should operate on three levels:

1. 
   SNCC workers should use nationalism as a way to organize the black community;
   
2. 
   They should begin to build community wide political movements; such as the LCFO; and,
   
3. 
   White SNCC organizers should begin “to organize the white community around black needs, around black history, the relative importance of blackness in the world today.” ³¹⁸
   

SNCC created a new central committee with Stokely Carmichael as chairman. SNCC proposed to go in a new direction.

On June 6, 1966, James Meredith, the African-American who had integrated the University of Mississippi in 1962 with the help of the United States Army, started on a 200 mile walk from Memphis to Jackson to show the African-Americans of Mississippi they could go to voting booths without fear. Twenty-eight miles out of Memphis while walking along U. S. Highway 51, South of Hernando, Mississippi, Meredith was shot three times by a white man with a shotgun. Though he was badly wounded, he wasn’t killed. Immediately, civil rights leaders rushed to Mississippi to promise Meredith that they would continue his march. Carmichael of SNCC met with Roy Wilkins of NAACP, Floyd McKissick of CORE and Martin Luther King, Jr. of SCLC. Carmichael convinced the SNCC central committee to support the march but with qualifications. SNCC wanted to de-emphasize the role of whites in the March and not issue a call for the liberal army to come to Mississippi. SNCC through it’s chairman Stokely Carmichael demanded that the march be protected and invited the self-defense Deacons for Defense and Justice to protect the march. Dr. King agreed only if the Deacons didn’t march with guns that may lead to the march being attacked. ³¹⁹

As the march entered Philadelphia, Mississippi, Dr. King conducted a memorial service for Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. When the whites attacked the march, demonstrators fought back. The SNCC central committee saw the march as a good opportunity to raise a new slogan for the movement representing its new direction. SNCC decided to raise the slogan of “Black Power” counter posed to “Freedom Now” when the march approached a SNCC stronghold in Greenwood, Mississippi. On June 17^th, the march entered Greenwood, Mississippi. The marchers tried to set up tents on the grounds of a school.

The police told the marchers the school grounds couldn’t be used without the school board’s permission. Carmichael tried to settle the dispute and ended up in jail for six hours for resisting the police order. That night a rally was held. About 600 people showed up. Carmichael was the last speaker. ³²⁰
Carmichael said, “This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested. I ain’t going to jail no more!” Carmichael began talking about the atrocities African-Americans had faced in the recent past and began to shout, “we want black power”. Willie Ricks of SNCC who had been priming the march before Greenwood with the slogan of “Black Power” jumped on the stage and shouted, “What do you want?” The crowd shouted, “Black Power!” He did this five times until the audience drowned out all sound with “Black Power.”

“We had been going against ‘Freedom Now’ for four days [before the rally]. That’s what SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) would be shouting: Freedom Now, Freedom Now. We’d say, ‘That don’t scare white folks’. The only thing that’s gonna get us freedom is power.” ³²¹

With the mass cry of black power SNCC became a catalyst for a black awakening of the mid-60’s to early 70’s. SNCC began to respond to this black awakening or consciousness by appealing to the nationalistic aspirations of many of the urban black under/working class.

When the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) raised the slogan of black power in 1966, it represented a transitional slogan within the civil rights movement. Black Power as articulated by the SNCC leadership still was a bourgeois democratic demand. It was a call in essence for proportional representation of African-Americans in the capitalist political arena. SNCC failed to advance a program and organize the masses around black power. SNCC at first organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (Black Panther Party) around black electoral power, which was correct, but as the spontaneous rebellions increased SNCC’s program was reduced to leftist rhetoric. Instead, SNCC only mobilized the masses around the slogan of Black Power and as a result the motion generated around Black Power subsided after a couple of years.

The Black Panther Party (“BPP”) also followed SNCC in mobilizing the masses in left adventurist actions and the motion for black political power fell to the initiative of the black middle class.

Many African-American radical groups in the 60’s organized on the basis of the revolutionary mood of the African-American masses and failed to develop correct tactics. Revolutionary tactics are not built upon revolutionary moods alone. The failure of SNCC, RAM and the BPP to organize for revolutionary African-American electoral power during the high tide (‘67-‘69 period) of the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) liquidated the left wing of the BLM from having a solid mass base.

As SNCC speakers were invited to speak in urban communities and on college campuses, SNCC also ceased to do concrete day-to-day organizing in rural local communities.

SNCC began to rely almost totally on speechmaking and its New York Office manned by professional fund-raisers and veteran staff members, to provide funds for payroll expenses. ³²³
In January 1966 SNCC announced its opposition to the Vietnam War, with SCLC following that position four months later along with CORE.

SNCC concentrated on getting press attention but the more radical SNCC became publicly the less funds it received from liberal white, mainly Jewish liberals.

Although some Jews cut off their support to SNCC during 1966, most did so because they like many former non-Jewish supporters disagreed with SNCC’s anti-war stance and with Carmichael’s inflammatory rhetoric. ³²⁴
As SNCC’s financial base was eroding, organizationally, it made alliances in the north that further alienated its liberal supporters. Responding to a letter from myself to Stokely Carmichael requesting permission to establish a chapter of the Black Panther Party, Carmichael came north to make the alliance with revolutionary black nationalists in New York. ³²⁵ From meetings in New York, a collective decision was made to build the Black Panther Party into a national organization. The revolutionary nationalists in New York were not alone in seeking to make an alliance with SNCC.
Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) recalls:

When a volunteer from Oakland, California, working in Lowndes County returned home, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale asked for permission to use the emblem for a party they were forming. ³²⁶

Stokely Carmichael would also threaten to make an alliance with the Nation of Islam and spoke often to N.O.I. mosques audiences.

As SNCC made alliances with black nationalists and major street gangs in northern cities, it often came under a quasi-para-military pressure to adhere to one or another aspect of black nationalist rhetoric. According to John Bracey, Jr., this occurred on one occasion at a dance of the Blackstone Rangers in Chicago. According to another source, a similar situation occurred in Cleveland, Ohio. Often these instances made SNCC personnel leery of black nationalist forces providing an uneasy alliance. SNCC also was involved in an internal split, or strife resulting from the Atlanta Project'’ continual demands that whites be purged from SNCC and it break off ties from them.

At a staff meeting held in upstate New York during December 1966, SNCC’s veteran leaders came under strong attack from separatists in SNCC’s recently established Atlanta Project. ³²⁷
Several members of the Atlanta Project were from the North, and took their ideological direction from the writings of Franz Fanon and the speeches of Malcolm X and often refuted aspects of the Marxian paradigm. They insisted the organization (SNCC) engage in an internal ideological purification movement. The Atlanta Project against the Carmichael faction waged ideological battles until Carmichael fired all members of the Atlanta Project for insubordination in the winter of 1967.

Staff members elected H. Rap Brown as Chairman, believing that he could remove SNCC from public controversy. ³²⁸

Veteran staff member Cleveland Sellers later acknowledged that afterward many donations from white sources just stopped coming in. ³²⁹