(SNCC) Brochure, Page 1]
[Image alt text = A black-and-white pamphlet from August 1963 for the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), a civil rights organization. The left side lists the group's leadership, including Chairman John Lewis and Communications Director Julian Bond, along with the organization's Atlanta, Georgia address. On the right side are two photographs of people, civil rights workers, taken in Ruleville, Mississippi.]
[Image credit = Public domain, accessed via the Civil Rights Movement Archive]
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is not a membership organization,
but rather an agency attempting 1 0 to stimulate and foster the growth of local protest movements.
The Coordinating Committee itself consists of representatives of protest groups which meet regularly to formulate strategy. The Committee elects an executive committee, which is responsible for employing staff and overseeing the general program.
Chairman: JOHN LEWIS
Executive Secretary: JAMES FORMAN
SIllD Coordinator: WORTH LONG
Communications Director: JULIAN BONO
Project Directors:
Mississippi: ROBERT MOSESS
Southwest Georgia: CHARLES SHERROD
Central Alabama: BERNARD LAFAYETTE
Arkansas: WILLIAM HANSEN
Eastern Shore: REGINALD ROBINSON
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
8 1/2 Raymond Street, N. W., Atlanta 14, Georgia
Telephone: 688·0331
THE FUTURE ...
The future entails redoubled efforts to continue:
introducing educated and determined young workers into hard-core areas;
maintaining a college contact that leads to militant action in cities and provides new recruits for full-time work.
The future means:
expanding our pilot voter registration projects in cities to provide workers in surrounding counties.
finding more funds to support students willing to work at subsistence wages and share the life of the Southern rural Negro while trying to convince him of his rights.
providing more and better workshops and conferences on the meaning and techniques of nonviolent community action and political involvement.
Change will be slow, but change must take place. SNCC will need three times our current staff to do the job we have only begun.We will also need three times our current budget.
The future means your support:
in contributions and in stimulating your local community to break down every form of racial discrimination now.
in letting us know how we can help you and how you can help us.
WE BELIEVE AND WE ASK YOU TO BELIEVE WITH US: WE SHALL OVERCOME!
[image 2 url: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16PEwiC19V5x1uIBnkWO78N_pg3dg3Xe7/view?usp=drive_link ]
[image caption: Visual of the SNCC Brochure, Page 2]
[Image alt text = A black-and-white photograph of a young Black man is sitting and clapping, with other men visible in the background. The image appears alongside a flyer from SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), a civil rights organization. The flyer, titled "The Future," describes goals like expanding voter registration, supporting student workers in the South, and fighting racial discrimination. It ends with the famous civil rights motto: "We Shall Overcome." The photo was taken in Danville, Virginia.
We, the students whocomprise the staff of the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the thousands whoform its foundation, have stakedour lives on the conviction thatan interracial democracy canbe made to function in this country, even in the fields, bayous,and deltas of the deep South.We have not spared ourselves in attempting to makethat faith reality. We call upon thefederal government to do likewise. We would have it understood that we are not calling onthe nation for what she mightdo for us, but rather to informher of what she must be prepared to do for herself.
... from SNCC testimony, beforethe House Judiciary Committee,May, 1963
HISTORY
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee emerged from the historic sit-in movement thatswept across the South in the spring of 1960. During the Easter season of that year, the firstregion-wide assembly of sit-in leaders was convened in Raleigh, North Carolina.
A temporary committee was established here to foster communication and coordinate the
activities of protest groups. This body met monthly throughout the summer, established
an office in Atlanta, and prepared for a second conference held in October 1960.
At this meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formally organized.
Representatives from each Southern state and the District of Columbia comprised the
Coordinating Committee. Participation in the 1961 Freedom Rides and a growing
awareness of the profound fear shackling the South convinced SNCC leaders that
someone would have to carry the freedom movement to the millions of exploited,
disenfranchised, and degraded Negroes of the Black Belt.
SNCC DID JUST THAT.
August 1961—SNCC launched its inaugural voter-registration project, choosing
Walthall, Pike, and Amite Counties of Mississippi. This sparked nonviolent direct
action by hundreds of high-school students in McComb, Mississippi, and led to the
development of a statewide voter-registration program. This struggle was recently
dramatized by the use of snarling police dogs to obstruct Negroes from registering
in Greenwood, Mississippi.
October 1961—SNCC workers entered Albany, Georgia, becoming the catalytic
fuse for the massive protests known as the Albany Movement.
By November 1961, sixteen students had volunteered to leave school for a year or
more to work in the hard-core rural areas for subsistence wages only.
PROGRAM
SNCC's grassroots approach is designed to stimulate protest on college and high school campuses, and in local communities … build indigenous, trained leadership … on
In recruiting potential student leaders from college campuses and sending them to
work in rural communities, SNCC hopes to bridge the gap between centers of learning andthe work-a-day communities.
SNCC workers have organized and guided local protest movements which are never
identified as SNCC projects. This is part of its program of developing, building, and strengthening indigenous leadership.
This program has captured the imagination of students all over the country. And today, more
than 50 SNCC field secretaries are symbols of courage and dedication as they undertake the
often tedious and tiring, and always dangerous work, in the most difficult areas of the South . .
MISSISSIPPI—SOUTHWEST GEORGIA—CENTRAL ALABAMA—EASTERN ARKANSAS
—SOUTHERN VIRGINIA
These students work for subsistence wages when funds are available, but at times they have
chopped cotton and picked squash to secure food. They live in the community, often in the homesof local residents, for the weeks and months that are required to break through generations of fearand intimidation. The students' courage helps emerging leaders achieve a new self-image and thestrength to act. Sustained personal contact, discussion and persuasion and his determination to staywith them and their problems, give the local people confidence in the SNCC worker and the programhe advocates. The people then begin to gain enough confidence in themselves to seek and asserttheir rights.In the community SNCC workers organize for voter registration and direct action. SNCC voterregistration efforts give disenfranchised Negroes the right to vote in areas where they have beendenied this right since Reconstruction. And, fully as important, the program deepens an awareness
of the meaning of first class citizenship, develops a community of action, and creates mutual trustamong people who too often have been suspicious and divided by fear.As of summer, 1963, SNCC had initiated and participated in . . . . direct action campaigns in 49 cities in 13 states.