Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

==1960: Emergence from the sit-in movement==
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed in April 1960 at a conference at [[Shaw University]] in [[Raleigh, North Carolina]], attended by 126 student delegates from 58 sit-in centers in 12 states, from 19 northern colleges, and from the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (SCLC), the [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE), the [[Fellowship of Reconciliation]] (FOR), the [[National Student Association]] (NSA), and [[Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)|Students for a Democratic Society]] (SDS).<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite book|last1=Carson|first1=Clayborne|title=In Struggle, SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s|date=1981|publisher=Harvard University Press}}</ref><ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960sncc Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founded] ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive.</ref> Among those attending who were to emerge as strategists for the committee and its field projects were [[Fisk University]] student [[Diane Nash]], Tennessee State student [[Marion Barry]], and [[American Baptist Theological Seminary]] students [[James Bevel]],  [[John Lewis]], and [[Bernard Lafayette]], all involved in the [[Nashville Student Movement]]; their mentor at [[Vanderbilt University]], [[James Lawson (American activist)|James Lawson]]; [[Charles McDew|Charles F. McDew]], who led student protests at [[South Carolina State University]]; [[J. Charles Jones]], [[Johnson C. Smith University]], who organized 200 students to participate in sit-ins at whites-only department stores and service counters throughout [[Charlotte, North Carolina|Charlotte]], [[North Carolina]]; [[Julian Bond]] from [[Morehouse College]], Atlanta;  and [[Stokely Carmichael]] from [[Howard University]], Washington, D.C.<ref>{{Cite web |last=sncclegacy |title=Founding Members |url=https://sncclegacyproject.org/about/founding-members/ |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=SNCC Legacy Project |language=en-US}}</ref>

The invitation had been issued by [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] on behalf of the SCLC, but the conference had been conceived and organized by then SCLC director [[Ella Baker]]. Baker was a critic of what she perceived as King's top-down leadership at the SCLC. "Strong people don't need strong leaders,"<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=B8k6btUYR68C&q=ella_baker%2C_martin_king Thomas F. Jackson, ''From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice''], Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, p. 104</ref> she told the young activists. Speaking to the students' own experience of protest organization, it was Baker's vision that appeared to prevail.

SNCC did not constitute itself as the youth wing of SCLC. It steered an independent course that sought to channel the students' program through the organizers out in the field rather than through its national office in Atlanta<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ella-baker-and-the-politi_b_7702936|title=Ella Baker and the Politics of Hope – Lessons From the Civil Rights Movement|last=Boyte|first=Harry|date=2015-07-01|newspaper=[[HuffPost]]|language=en|access-date=2019-06-03}}</ref> ("small and rather dingy," located above a beauty parlor near the city's five Black colleges).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/sncc-national-office/|title=SNCC National Office|accessdate=Apr 2, 2023}}</ref> Under the constitution adopted, the SNCC comprised representatives from each of the affiliated "local protest groups," and these groups (and not the committee and its support staff) were to be recognized as "the primary expression of a protest in a given area."<ref>[https://www.crmvet.org/docs/sncc_constitution_62.pdf ''The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Constitution (as revised in Conference, April 29~ 1962)''].</ref>

Under the same general principle, that "the people who do the work should make the decisions", the students committed to a "[[participatory democracy]]" which, avoiding office hierarchy, sought to reach decisions by consensus.<ref name="auto2">{{Cite web|url=https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/womhist|title=Women and Social Movements in the United States,1600-2000 &#124; Alexander Street Documents|website=documents.alexanderstreet.com|accessdate=Apr 2, 2023}}</ref><ref name="Casey Hayden 2015 p. 65">Casey Hayden (2015), "Only Love Is Radical." ''Inspiring Participatory Democracy: Student Movements from Port Huron to Today'', ed. Tom Hayden. New York: Routledge, 2015, p. 65.</ref> Group meetings were convened in which every participant could speak for as long as they wanted and the meeting would continue until everyone who was left was in agreement with the decision. Given the physical risks involved in many activities in which SNCC was to engage this was thought particularly important: "no one felt comfortable making a decision by majority rule that might cost somebody else's life."<ref>Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic (2008). ''Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History''. PM Press. p. 113.</ref>

Initially the SNCC continued the focus on sit-ins and [[boycott]]s targeting establishments (restaurants, retail stores, theaters) and public amenities maintaining whites-only or segregated facilities.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Moody|first1=Anne|title=Coming of Age in Mississippi|date=1970|publisher=New York: Dell Publishing Company}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Hine|first1=Darlene|title=Black Women in America|year=1993|url=https://archive.org/details/blackwomeninamer00hine|url-access=registration|publisher=New York: Carlson Publishing, 1993|isbn=9780926019614}}</ref> But it was to adopt a new tactic that helped galvanize the movement nationally. In February 1961, Diane Nash, [[Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson|Ruby Doris Smith]], Charles Sherrod, and J. Charles Jones joined the [[Rock Hill, South Carolina]] sit-in protests and followed the example of the [[Friendship Nine]] in enduring an extended jail time rather than post bail.<ref name="Black women">Clayborne Carson and Heidi Hess, [http://www.stanford.edu/~ccarson/articles/black_women_3.htm "Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee"]. From [[Darlene Clark Hine]] (ed.), ''Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia'', New York: Carlson Publishing, 1993.</ref> The "Jail-no-Bail" stand was seen as a moral refusal to accept, and to effectively subsidize, a corrupted constitution-defiant police and judicial system—while at the same time saving the movement money it did not have.<ref>{{cite news |title='Jail, No Bail' Idea Stymied Cities' Profiting From Civil Rights Protesters |type=transcript |url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june11/jail_03-07.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110310004201/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/jan-june11/jail_03-07.html |archive-date=2011-03-10 |work=The PBS NewsHour |access-date=21 October 2011}}"The 'Jail, No Bail' strategy became a new tactic in the fight for civil rights. Documentary produced by South Carolina ETV documenting the key moment in civil rights history." (Video and Audio)</ref>

As way to "dramatize that the church, the house of all people, fosters segregation more than any other institution," SNCC students also participated in "kneel-ins"—kneeling in prayer outside of Whites-only churches. Presbyterians churches, targeted because their "ministers lacked the protection and support of a church hierarchy," were not long indifferent. In August 1960, the 172nd General Assembly of the [[United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America|United Presbyterian Church]] wrote to SNCC: "Laws and customs requiring racial discrimination are, in our judgement, such serious violations of the law of God as to justify peaceful and orderly disobedience or disregard of these laws."<ref>{{Cite web |title=SNCC Project: A Year by Year History 1960-1970 - Mapping American Social Movements |url=https://depts.washington.edu/moves/SNCC_project.shtml |access-date=2023-10-17 |website=depts.washington.edu}}</ref>