Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

===Carmichael and the Vine Street Project Statement===
In May 1966 Forman was replaced by [[Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson]], who was determined "to keep the SNCC together."<ref>Harry G. Lefever (2005). ''Undaunted by the Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957/1967''. Mercer University Press. p, 216</ref> But Forman recalls male leaders fighting "her attempts as executive secretary to impose a sense of organizational responsibility and self-discipline," and "trying to justify themselves by the fact that their critic was a woman"<ref>Paula Giddings (1984). ''When and Where I Enter''. New York: Bantam. pp. 314–315</ref> In October 1967 Smith-Robinson died, aged just 25, "of exhaustion" according to one of her co-workers, "destroyed by the movement."<ref>Cynthia Fleming (1998). ''Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson''. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. {{ISBN|978-0847689729}}</ref>

Replacing John Lewis as chairman in May 1966 was the 24-year old [[Stokely Carmichael]]. When on the night of June 16, 1966, following protests at the shooting of solo freedom marcher [[James Meredith]], Carmichael walked out of jail (his 27th arrest) and into Broad Street Park in [[Greenwood, Mississippi]], he asked the waiting crowd "What do you want?." They roared back "Black Power! Black Power!"<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00x6mb9|title=BBC Two – Witness, Civil Rights, USA, Stokely Carmichael and 'Black Power'|date=10 August 2012 |publisher=BBC|language=en-GB|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref>

For Carmichael Black Power was a "call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."<ref>{{Cite web  |date=2009 |title=Stokely Carmichael |url=https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/stokely-carmichael |access-date=2 April 2023 |website=www.history.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Hamilton |first1=Charles V. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Eu2Ez9K8cQEC |title=Black Power: Politics of Liberation in America |last2=Ture |first2=Kwame |date=2011|orig-date=1967 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-307-79527-4 |pages=44 |language=en}}</ref><blockquote>We have to organize ourselves to speak from a position of strength and stop begging people to look kindly upon us. We are going to build a movement in this country based on the color of our skins that is going to free us from our oppressors and we have to do that ourselves.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/black-power-speech-28-july-1966-stokely-carmichael|title="Black Power" Speech (28 July 1966, by Stokely Carmichael) {{!}} Encyclopedia.com|website=www.encyclopedia.com|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref></blockquote>
A new direction SNCC was evident in the [[Atlanta, Georgia]], "Vine City" Project, SNCC's first effort at urban organizing. Co-directed by William "Bill" Ware and [[Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons]] (Robinson), it took up the challenge of the Georgia State Legislature's refusal to seat [[Julian Bond]] because of SNCC opposition to the [[Vietnam War]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bond, Horace Julian {{!}} The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute |url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/bond-horace-julian |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=kinginstitute.stanford.edu |language=en}}</ref>

Ware, who had been greatly affected by his experience of newly independent [[Ghana]], emphasized racial solidarity. Black people, he argued, needed to work "without the guidance and/or direction and control of non-Blacks". Without control over their affairs, he warned, "Black people will know no freedom, but only more subtle forms of slavery."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://snccdigital.org/people/bill-ware/|title=Bill Ware|website=SNCC Digital Gateway|language=en|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref> A Vine Street Project position paper on Black Power,<ref name=":9">{{Cite web|url=https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/policy-statements/atlanta-project-statement/|title=Atlanta Project Statement|website=SNCC Digital Gateway|language=en|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref> which Simmons helped write, suggested that: 
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

This was "not to say that whites have not had an important role in the Movement." If people now had "the right to picket, the right to give out leaflets, the right to vote, the right to demonstrate, the right to print," the Vine City paper allowed that it was "mainly because of the entrance of white people into Mississippi, in the summer of '64." But their "role is now over and it should be," for what would 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."

What was needed now for "people to free themselves" was an "all-Black project" and this had to "exist from the beginning." Future cooperation with whites had to be a matter of "coalition". But there could be "no talk of 'hooking up' unless Black people organize Blacks and white people organize whites." Those "white people who desire change" should go "where the problem (of racism) is most manifest," in their own communities where power has been created "for the express purpose of denying Blacks human dignity and self-determination."<ref name=":9" />

Even without embracing an explicitly separatist agenda, many veteran project directors accepted the case that the presence of white organizers undermined black self-confidence.<ref>Carson (1995). p. 299</ref> (Although overridden, on that basis [[Oretha Castle Haley]] already in 1962 had suspended whites from the [[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]] chapter in [[New Orleans]]).<ref>{{Cite book|title=Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times|last1=Allured|first1=Janet|last2=Gentry|first2=Judith|publisher=University of Georgia Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-8203-2946-8|location=Athens, GA|pages=303–323}}</ref> [[Julian Bond]] later reflected:<ref>Bond (2014)</ref>
<blockquote>...the successes Freedom Summer achieved resulted from its embrace of a paradox — it tried to fight bigotry by appealing to people more concerned about whites, not blacks. Appealing to the nation's racism accepted white supremacy. By acknowledging its dependence on whites to popularize the civil rights struggle in the South, SNCC contradicted its rhetorical belief in the equal worth of all races, and undermined its insistence that indigenous blacks were best prepared to lead the struggle for their deliverance from white dominance.
</blockquote>

Yet like Forman (now urging the study of [[Marxism]]),<ref name="Christopher M. Richardson 2014 p. 181">Christopher M. Richardson, Ralph E. Luker (2014). ''Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement''. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 181</ref> Carmichael hesitated to accept the implication that whites should be excluded from the movement. It was in December that he led the SNCC national executive in a narrow decision (19 in favor, 18 against and 24 abstentions) to ask white co-workers and volunteers to leave.<ref>{{cite web|title=Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Actions 1960–1970|url=https://depts.washington.edu/moves/SNCC_map-events.shtml|website=Mapping American Social Movements}}</ref> In May 1967 the Coordinating Committee formally asked its non-black staff to resign.<ref>Kristin Anderson-Bricker (1992). ''From Beloved Community to Triple Jeopardy: Ideological Change and the Evolution of Feminism Among Black and White Women in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1960–1975''. Syracuse University. p. 56</ref> Whites should concentrate on organizing poor white communities and leave SNCC to promote African-American self-reliance.<ref name=forman>James Forman, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Y2RIhBEy7dEC&dq=sncc+expulsion+of+whites&pg=PP16 ''The Making of Black Revolutionaries''], pp. xvi–xv (2nd edn 1997). Accessed March 17, 2007.</ref>