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US history
Course: US history > Unit 8
Lesson 3: The Civil Rights Movement- Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement
- African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
- Emmett Till
- The Montgomery Bus Boycott
- "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
- The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
- SNCC and CORE
- Black Power
- The Civil Rights Movement
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SNCC and CORE
Read about the two civil rights groups that organized nonviolent protests during the 1950s and 1960s.
Overview
- The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) was formed in 1942 as an interracial organization committed to achieving integration through nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience.
- The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), formed in 1960, focused on mobilizing local communities in nonviolent protests to expose injustice and demand federal action.
- CORE and SNCC—together with other organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference—led the Civil Right Movement’s campaigns of the early 1960s, which included sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voter registration drives, and the 1963 March on Washington.
- By the late 1960s both CORE and SNCC became disillusioned with the slow rate of progress associated with nonviolence and turned toward the growing Black Power movement.
CORE
CORE was founded by a group of white and black students on the campus of the University of Chicago in 1942. Its founders had been active in the interfaith, pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, and drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s practice of nonviolent civil disobedience.
In 1961, CORE's national director James Farmer organized an effort to integrate interstate bus stations and buses in the Deep South with a series of Freedom Rides. Freedom Riders were groups of white and black civil rights activists who rode buses to challenge segregation in interstate transportation in southern states.
The first Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C. on two buses that traveled into southern states. Freedom Riders were met with brutal violence by whites opposed to racial integration. An unidentified white person threw a fire bomb through an open bus window outside Anniston, Alabama, and Freedom Riders were beaten by a white mob after exiting the burning bus. One rider suffered permanent brain damage from a beating. In Birmingham, Alabama another rider required more than fifty stitches after being struck by a metal pipe.
The first two Freedom Ride buses were terminated after ten days. But during the summer of 1961, the Freedom Rides were carried on by more than a thousand Americans. John Lewis, who would soon become a celebrated civil rights leader, wrote at the time that he would “give up all if necessary for the Freedom Ride, that Justice and Freedom might come to the Deep South.” The Freedom Rides were widely covered in the press, and remain one of the most memorable events in Civil Rights Movement history.
CORE activists also contributed to the voter registration drives in the Deep South that became the focus of the civil rights movement in late 1961, and contributed to the voter education and registration drives during 1963 and 1964 in Mississippi and elsewhere. CORE cosponsored the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the gathering of some 250,000 Americans at which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
By 1966 CORE increasingly embraced black separatism and black power, and lent its support to the anti-Vietnam War movement.
SNCC
SNCC—pronounced “snick”—grew out of student sit-ins at lunch counters that had begun in February 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In April, Ella Baker, the executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and students from the sit-ins met on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina and founded SNCC.
In 1966 Stokely Carmichael was elected to head SNCC. Carmichael embraced the Black Power Movement, which included black separatism and the use of violence in self-defense. In June 1966, Carmichael declared at a rally that “1966 is the year of the concept of Black Power. The year when black men realized their full worth in society—their dignity and their beauty—and their power—the greatest power on the earth—the power of the right.”
With its commitment to nonviolence dropped, Carmichael renamed the organization the Student National Coordinating Committee. In 1967, H. Rap Brown took over as SNCC chairman and moved the organization further toward black separatism.
By the late 1960s, the broader Civil Rights Movement fragmented in the wake of the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and rioting in major American cities. By the early 1970s, SNCC had dissolved.
What do you think?
College-age students were principal founders of both CORE and SNCC. In what ways did student voices advance the movement for civil rights? In what ways might college-aged students’ perspectives have been limited?
What were the successes and challenges of the direct action, nonviolent protest strategy that both CORE and SNCC employed in the early 1960s?
Why did both CORE and SNCC increasingly turn away from nonviolence by the late 1960s? Do you think this turn was a good idea? Why or why not?
Want to join the conversation?
"Carmichael embraced the Black Power Movement, which included black separatism and the use of violence in self-defense."
How is "the use of violence in self-defense," viewed differently from "non-violence"?(9 votes)
Non-violence is the idea that one refuses to use force to defend at all, no matter the circumstance. Self defense can be viewed, in the broadest of terms, in that you are willing to use force of some sort to retaliate when violence is committed upon you. Be it simply pushing back when shoved or open warfare.(19 votes)
In what ways might college-aged students’ perspectives have been limited?(3 votes)
Some of those students went to poorly equipped colleges where the teachers hadn't been well prepared, or who had given up learning for themselves and were merely waiting to retire. Some college-aged students couldn't go to college because their families didn't have the resources to support their studies. Some college-aged students were women, whose families didn't believe that a girl needed to do anything after the age of 16 but have babies and do dishes. Some college-aged students had been drafted into the armed forces so didn't see much beyond the sights of their rifles. Some college-aged students had been thrown into jail for minor offenses that in other states would have been punished with a warning or community service assignment. Some college aged students were encouraged by their communities to study at narrowly focused religious schools which may have been excellent, but which didn't encourage exploration of alternative ideas.(7 votes)
College-aged students fighting for their opinions was destructive for the civil-rights movement, as if such people were not idiots, there would be no colleges. As it is, pundits and the like routinely use the foolishness of the youngest members of a movement to criticize the movement as a whole, which their followers will accept wholeheartedly even when it is, realistically, mudslinging at people who haven't had time to grow out of their mud.
Greta Thunberg would be a good example. No matter what views you may hold on climate change, you'd probably agree that her antics in her childhood activism cannot be used to criticize the umbrella of greenhouse concerns, but that she was not, at the time, a particularly good or appropriate pundit for her side of the aisle. alas, one often sees her made fun off to argue against the dangers, not simply to drive her out of the spotlight or some such goal.(3 votes)
What does core mean?(1 vote)- I believe you'll be able to find that in the lesson. How about taking another look.(6 votes)
- how did the sncc organize the grassroots and what was the purpose of this?(2 votes)
Is their still blackpower in todays society ?(0 votes)
Although the Black Power Movement has technically ended, there are still elements of it in today's society. Below is an interesting article about the topic.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/02/01/black-lives-matter-black-power-movement/78991894/(4 votes)
- In what ways might college aged students' perspectives have been limited?(0 votes)
What does CORE mean?(0 votes)
can y'all do black history month questions.(0 votes)
Who and why started the black history month?(2 votes)
