Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Excerpt from "The Basis of Black Power," 1966
Reprinted from "Takin' It to the Streets:" A Sixties Reader, 2003; also available online at www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/387.html
"Negroes in this country have never been allowed to organize themselves because of white interference. As a result of this, the stereotype has been reinforced that blacks cannot organize themselves."
On February 1, 1960, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat down at an all-white Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, to order some coffee. When the waitress refused to serve them, the students stayed, stating that they would not leave until they could place an order. The four remained sitting at the counter quietly without service for about an hour until the store closed. The next day, nearly thirty students occupied the lunch counter for about two hours, attracting the attention of local news reporters. The day after that, sixty-six black students filled nearly every seat at the lunch counter. After a week of steady protests, no black student had been served at the lunch counter, and the Woolworth's manager decided to close the store temporarily. Students at other colleges became inspired to organize their own sit-ins. By the end of April, more than 50,000 protestors, mostly students, had staged nonviolent sit-ins in every southern state.
To organize their efforts, several of the student sit-in protestors gathered at a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 16, 1960. The result of the conference was the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick"). One of the founding principles of the organization was nonviolence. Members agreed that in order to win the support of nonblacks, they must never respond with acts of violence, even if attacked. During the first half of the 1960s, SNCC members strictly followed their doctrine of nonviolence. Some members were beaten; others shot. And when these attacks hit newsstands and aired on television, SNCC won supporters.
Cooperative black and white civil rights activism culminated on August 28, 1963, when 250,000 people rallied at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in support of the proposal of civil rights legislation introduced by President John F. Kennedy. During the rally, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech that envisioned a color-blind society. All three television networks broadcast the speech to millions of viewers. But for SNCC, this rally marked not a victory, but a real disappointment with the struggle for civil rights. SNCC chairman John Lewis (1940–) had planned to publicly criticize the Kennedy administration for proposing civil rights legislation that did too little to really help blacks. Although other civil rights leaders at the rally persuaded Lewis to temper his speech that day, Lewis and other SNCC members did not let go of their angry disappointment at the slowness of progress within the civil rights movement.
By the mid-1960s, the strategy of SNCC officially changed when Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) gained control of the organization. Speaking in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1966, Carmichael announced: "The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. We've been saying freedom for six years—and we ain't got nothin'. What we gonna start saying now is 'Black Power,'" according to The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. Under Carmichael's leadership, SNCC produced a position paper, titled "The Basis of Black Power," in 1966 that outlined a new strategy for success: one that would exclude whites from the organization and made a case for excluding interaction between blacks and whites in all facets of society.
Things to remember while reading the excerpt from "The Basis of Black Power":
- While SNCC members had hoped that white support would help their efforts to win civil rights, by the late 1960s SNCC members found support from whites complicated. White protestors often did not receive the same harsh treatment as black SNCC protestors. And if they were killed, white protestors were mourned by the nation but the deaths of black protestors were often ignored by national news organizations.
- In 1964 SNCC members and other civil rights activists organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as an alternative to the established all-white Democratic Party. When the MFDP candidates failed to gain entrance to the 1964 Democratic National Convention, SNCC and other activists felt betrayed and angry, and they believed that the established white community would never live up to the promise of a fully integrated, equal society.
- By 1964 SNCC had abandoned its regular seminars to promote nonviolence and completely abandoned the idea by the end of the 1960s.
- SNCC membership voted to expel all whites from the organization in 1967.
Excerpt from "The Basis of Black Power"
The myth that the Negro is somehow incapable of liberating himself, is lazy, etc., came out of the American experience. In the books that children read, whites are always good (good symbols are white), blacks are evil or seen as savages in movies, their language is referred to as adialect , and black people in this country are supposedly descended from savages.
Any white person who comes into the movement has the concepts in his mind about black people, if only subconsciously. He cannot escape them because the whole society has geared his subconscious in that direction.
Miss America coming from Mississippi has a chance to represent all of America, but a black person from either Mississippi or New York will never represent America. Thus the white people coming into the movement cannot relate to the black experience, cannot relate to the word black, cannot relate to thenitty gritty , cannot relate to the experience that brought such a word into existence, cannot relate tochitterlings , hog's head cheese , pig feet , ham hocks , and cannot relate to slavery, because these things are not a part of their experience. They also cannot relate to the black religious experience, nor to the black church, unless, of course, this church has taken on white manifestations.
White Power
Negroes in this country have never been allowed to organize themselves because of white interference. As a result of this, the stereotype has been reinforced that blacks cannot organize themselves. The white psychology that blacks have to be watched, also reinforces this stereotype. Blacks, in fact, feel intimidated by the presence of whites, because of their knowledge of the power that whites have over their lives. One white person can come into a meeting of black people and change the complexion of that meeting.… People would immediately start talking about brotherhood, love, etc.; race would not be discussed.
If people must express themselves freely, there has to be a climate in which they can do this. If blacks feel intimidated by whites, then they are not liable to vent the rage that they feel about whites in the presence of whites—especially not the black people whom we are trying to organize, i.e., the broad masses of black people. A climate has to be created whereby blacks can express themselves. The reasons that whites must be excluded is not that one is anti-white, but because the effects that one is trying to achieve cannot succeed because whites have an intimidating effect. Ofttimes, the intimidating effect is in direct proportion to the amount of degradation that black people have suffered at the hands of white people.
Roles of Whites and Blacks
It must be offered that white people who desire change in this country should go where that problem (racism) is most manifest.The problem is not in the black community. The white people should go into white communities where the whites have created power for the express purpose of denying blacks human dignity and self-determination. Whites who come into the black community with ideas of change seem to want to absolve the power structure of its responsibility for what it is doing, and saying that change can only come through black unity, which is the worst kind ofpaternalism. This is not to say that whites have not had an important role in the movement. In the case of Mississippi, their role was very key in that they helped give blacks the right to organize, but that role is now over, and it should be.
People now have the right to picket, the right to give out leaflets, the right to vote, the right to demonstrate, the right to print.
These things which revolve around the right to organize have been accomplished mainly because of the entrance of white people into Mississippi, in the summer of 1964. Since these goals have now been accomplished, whites' role in the movement has now ended. What does it mean if black people, once having the right to organize, are not allowed to organize themselves? It means that blacks' ideas about inferiority are being reinforced. Shouldn't people be able to organize themselves? Blacks should be given this right. Further, white participation means in the eyes of the black community that whites are the brains behind the movement, and that blacks cannot function without whites. This only serves to perpetuate existing attitudes within the existing society, i.e., blacks are dumb, unable to take care of business, etc. Whites are smart, the brains behind the whole thing.
[…]In the beginning of the movement, we had fallen into a trap whereby we thought that our problems revolved around the right to eat at certain lunch counters or the right to vote, or to organize our communities. We have seen, however, that the problem is much deeper. The problem of this country, as we had seen it, concerned all blacks and all whites and therefore if decisions were left to the young people, then solutions would be arrived at. But this negates the history of black people and whites. We have dealtstringently with the problem ofUncle Tom , but we have not yet gotten around toSimon Legree . We must ask ourselves, who is the real villain—Uncle Tom or Simon Legree? Everybody knows Uncle Tom, but who knows Simon Legree? So what we have now in SNCC is a closed society, a clique. Black people cannot relate to SNCC because of its unrealistic,nonracial atmosphere; denying their experience of America as a racist society. In contrast, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Martin Luther King, Jr., has a staff that at least maintains a black facade. The front office is virtually all black, but nobody accuses SCLC of being racist.
If we are to proceed toward true liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people. We must form our own institutions, credit unions, co-ops, political parties, write our own histories.
To proceed further, let us make some comparisons between the Black Movement of the early 1900s and the movement of the 1960s—i.e., compare the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with SNCC. Whites subverted the Niagara movement (the forerunner of the NAACP) which, at the outset, was an all-black movement. The name of the new organization was also very revealing, in that it presupposed blacks have to advanced to the level of whites. We are now aware that the NAACP has grown reactionary, is controlled by the black power structure itself, and stands as one of the main roadblocks to black freedom. SNCC, by allowing the whites to remain in the organization, can have its efforts subverted in much the same manner, i.e., through having them play important roles such as community organizers, etc. Indigenous leadership cannot be built with whites in the positions they now hold.
These facts do not mean that whites cannot help. They can participate on a voluntary basis. We can contract work out to them, but in no way can they participate on a policy-making level.
Black Self-Determination
The charge may be made that we are racists, but whites who are sensitive to our problems will realize that we must determine our own destiny.
In an attempt to find a solution to our dilemma, we propose that our organization (SNCC) should be black-staffed, black-controlled, and black-financed. We do not want to fall into a similar dilemma that other civil rights organizations have fallen into. If we continue to rely upon white financial support we will find ourselves entwined in thetentacles of the white power complex that controls this country. It is also important that a black organization (devoid ofcultism ) be projected to our people so that it can be demonstrated that such organizations areviable .
More and more we see black people in this country being used as a tool of the white liberal establishment. Liberal whites have not begun to address themselves to the real problem of black people in this country–witness their bewilderment, fear, and anxiety whennationalism is mentioned concerning black people. An analysis of the white liberal's reaction to the word nationalism alone reveals a very meaningful attitude of whites of anideological persuasion toward blacks in this country. It means previous solutions to black problems in this country have been made in the interests of those whites dealing with these problems and not in the best interests of black people in the country. Whites can only subvert our true search and struggles forself-determination , self-identification, and liberation in this country. Reevaluation of the white and black roles must now take place so that white no longer designate roles that black people play but rather black people define white people's roles.
Too long have we allowed white people to interpret the importance and meaning of the cultural aspects of our society. We have allowed them to tell us what was good about our Afro-Americanmusic, art, and literature. How many black critics do we have on the jazz scene? How can a white person who is not part of the black psyche (except in the oppressor's role) interpret the meaning of the blues to us who are manifestations of the song themselves?
It must be pointed out that on whatever level of contact blacks and whites come together, that meeting or confrontation is not on the level of the blacks but always on the level of the whites. This only means that our everyday contact with whites is a reinforcement of themyth of white supremacy . Whites are the ones who must try to raise themselves to our humanistic level. We are not, after all, the ones who are responsible for a genocidal war in Vietnam; we are not the ones who are responsible forneocolonialism in Africa and Latin America; we are not the ones who held a people in animalistic bondage over 400 years. We reject the American dream as defined by white people and must work to construct an American reality defined by Afro-Americans.…
What happened next…
In 1967 more than 150 American cities reported riots or, as black activists called them, "rebellions." Huge numbers of rioters burned city blocks and fought with police and National Guardsmen. The eruption of riots helped cement SNCC members' belief that nonviolent protest was no longer effective. Activists banded together with a sense of resistance to white society and common brother and sisterhood that came to be called "Black Power."
SNCC became an increasingly radical group throughout the later years of the 1960s. SNCC cooperated with the Black Panther Party starting in 1968, sharing offices and organizing rallies and violence. The Black Panther Party came to be known as one of the most violent groups supporting "Black Power." Many of the group's members were killed or imprisoned after conflicts with police in Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California.
SNCC leaders Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) and H. Rap Brown (1943–) gained national reputations as black radicals. Although Carmichael was kicked out of SNCC in 1968 for advocating violence in cities, when Brown succeeded him as chairman he took the word "Nonviolent" out of the name and renamed SNCC the Student National Coordinating Committee, to reflect the organization's willingness to react violently if necessary.
The surge of violent protests united blacks, but also gave rise to conservative, white politicians who began focusing attention on liberal government policies that they linked to riots and other civil rights violence. Some of the most prominent conservative politicians during the era were Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), who won the California governorship in 1966, and George Wallace (1919–1998), who began campaigning for the presidency in 1967.
Ultimately, as protestors grew more violent and others grew more conservative, both blacks and whites, no matter their opinion of the civil rights movement, had a hard time figuring out the truth about the causes of riots and the solutions for the civil strife. By the early 1970s, SNCC lost its momentum as its leaders spent increasing amounts of time dodging legal troubles. Brown was imprisoned in 1971 for robbing a tavern, and without his leadership SNCC dissolved as a forceful political group.
Did you know…
- In 1960 blacks made up approximately 10 percent of the American population.
- In 1967 the prominent African American newspaper, the Amsterdam News of New York, announced that it would no longer use the term "Negro."
- Martin Luther King Jr. and the leaders of the NAACP vocally opposed the embrace of violence promoted by SNCC and other groups in the late 1960s.
- Many members of SNCC became powerful politicians: Marion Barry became mayor of Washington, D.C., Julian Bond served as a Georgia senator, and John Lewis served as a Georgia congressman.
Consider the following…
- Explain why SNCC members may have changed their view from nonviolent protest.
- Do you think nonviolent protests would be effective if violent attacks from opponents to these protests were not reported by television cameras or newspapers? Explain your opinion.
- What do you think SNCC gained from expelling white supporters from membership?
For More Information
Books
Bloom, Alexander, and Wini Breines, eds. "Takin' It to the Streets": A Sixties Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Farber, David. The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.
Farber, David, and Beth Bailey, with others. The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam, 1987; revised, 1993.
Dialect: A variation of a language that is distinguished by unique vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, and is used by a distinct group or in a particular region.
Nitty gritty: The everyday experiences.
Chitterlings, hog's head cheese, pig feet, ham hocks: Various pork dishes traditional to Southern black culture.
Paternalism: The practice of governing or managing individuals in a manner similar to that of a father dealing with his children.
Stringently: Severely.
Uncle Tom: The character in the book Uncle Tom's Cabin, whose name became slang for any black acting in a submissive or deferential way toward whites.
Simon Legree: The character of the brutal slave trader in the book Uncle Tom's Cabin whose name became slang for any harsh authority figure.
Tentacles: Extensions of a larger body with the ability to grasp.
Cultism: Like a cult, a group obsessively committed to an idea.
Viable: Capable of working.
Nationalism: Devotion to and promotion of the interests and culture of a particular nation.
Ideological persuasion: A certain mind-set or attitude.
Self-determination: The free choice of a people about their own political status.
Myth of white supremacy: The idea of white superiority.
Neocolonialism: A governmental policy of influencing a less powerful nation by economic and political means.