- speaking of a movement
Elite Philanthropy, SNCC, And The Civil Rights Movement
Part I of III
Swans Commentary | by Michael Barker | November 1, 2010
- "There is a stark reason why romanticizing the civil rights movement fails young people. It is not supported by the facts. ... Though Jim Crow is dead, the evidence is overwhelming that the culture of white supremacy prevails in a more protected form than was ever possessed by the necessarily embattled idea of Jim Crow."
—Wesley Hogan, 2007. (1)
"In order to find effective solutions, one must formulate the problem correctly. One must start from premises rooted in truth and reality rather than myth."
—Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, 1967. (2)
(Swans - November 1, 2010) Fifty years ago, a small group of students came together to fight white supremacy in the United States. They were known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Since the advent of their pioneering activism, which spanned the 1960s, many books have been written to commemorate their successes, but the first one that was published in 1964 by one of their few adult advisers was Howard Zinn's SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Reflecting on the outstanding commitment of the initial sixteen college students "who, in the fall of 1961, decided to drop everything" to work for social justice Zinn notes how by early 1964 their numbers had swelled to 150 full-time activists. A phenomenal achievement given that: "In the most heated days of abolitionism before the Civil War, there were never that many dedicated people who turned their backs on ordinary pursuits and gave their lives wholly to the movement." (3) But while we should rightly celebrate the individual dedication in the face of massive adversity that was shown by SNCC workers and the thousands of other activists involved in the civil rights movement, it is also necessary to critically reflect upon their legacy.
Resume.
