Box 19, Folder 7, Document 17

Box 19, Folder 7, Document 17

HISTOEY

The Studer. Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee—SC—was born out of the
student sit-in rve: A conference at Raleigh,
North Carolin: = Easter Weekend in 1960
formed the Tenvorary Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Orumittee. At an Atlanta con-
ference later tz year, officers were elected,
programs ovtacd, and the “temporary”
dropped.

From 2n immediate concern with lunch
counters znd zuvie theaters, SNCC moved
into activity arnss the entire Southern Black
Bek

Particpztiar in the Freedom Rides in
1961 and 2 exoving sense of the depth of
fear that shaci2a. most Negroes of the South
convinced SNC! that some one would have
to take the fredom movement to the mil-
lions of disextznchised, dispossessed and
degraded Nezocs of the rural South...

SNCC DIP JUST THAT

... August, 1943, SNCC launched the Deep
South’s first scaent manned voter registra-
tion projeci .. choosing Walthal, Pike and
Amite Counts: in Southwest Mississippi.
Their drive devioped into a student revolt
in McComb, tean to spread across the en-
tire state and ciminated in the 1964 Sum-
mer Project tht involved more than 1,000

volunteer WCrers.

_.. October, 18xi — SNCC workers opened
up Albany, Gecgia for the massive demon-
strations that tclowed that year and have
since organized novements in the surround-
ing counties.

... January, 1%3 — SNCC workers came
to Selma, Atsiama, and with the aid of
local groups s?:the stage for the drive that
resulted in the 1964 Voting Rights Act.

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PROGRAM

_SNCC’S grass-roots approach is designed to

- ... build indigenous, trained leadership . . . in
small communities and urban centers of the South,
in high schools and college campuses .. .

SNCC workers organize and aid local and
state wide movements, some never identified as
SNCC projects. This is part of its program to in-
sure a continuous committed movement across the
South.

; This program has captured the idealism and
imagination of students and adults all across the,
country, and today, more than 150 SNCC field
workers are engaged in the always dangerous,
often dreary and tedious work of organizing peo-
ple in the most difficult areas of the South...

. Mississippi — Southwest Georgia
_ Central Alabama — Eastern Arkansas

SNCC field secretaries receive subsistence
salaries when funds are available, but at times
have chopped cotton and picked squash to secure
food and a bed. They live in the community they
work in, in the homes of local residents and in

. freedom houses, for the weeks and months re-
quired to break through generations of fear-en-
forced apathy and despair. A SNCC worker's
skills and drive help a community begin. Sus-
tained personal contact, discussion and persuasion
and his determination to stay with the job gives

..a’community confidence to seck and assert their
rights and to make their own decisions.

. SNCC voter registration drives and work on

’ Agricultural Stabilization Committee elections
have begun to give forgotten communities a power

- they can use-to build their own organizations and
to help themselves . . .

—the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
*. . . an independent political party which educates
by its work ... . attempts to involve the disen-
franchised in the political processes which are so
crucial to their lives. :

_-—the Poor People’s Corporation .. . “To

_ assist low income groups in their efforts to re-
ceive financial assistance to initiate and sustain
self-help projects of a cooperative nature that are
designed to offset some of the effects of poverty.”

—the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union. . .
farm workers in the Mississippi Delta working to
improve economic conditions . . .

‘— Freedom Schools . . . community centers
. - all these things mean a ray of hope for those
- with no hope of help anywhere.



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