Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

==1967–1968: Northern strategy and the split with Carmichael and the Panthers==
By early 1967, SNCC was approaching [[bankruptcy]]. The call for Black Power and the departure of white activists did not go down well with the liberal foundations and churches in the North. This was at a time when SNCC organizers were themselves heading North to the "ghettoes" where, as the urban riots of the mid-1960s had demonstrated, victories at lunch counters and ballot boxes in the South counted for little. Julian Bond recounts projects being:<ref name="what we did">Julian Bond (2000). [http://sncclegacyproject.org/we-were-sncc/what-we-did : What we did].</ref><blockquote>...established in Washington, D.C., to fight for home rule; in Columbus, Ohio, where a community foundation was organized; in New York City's [[Harlem]], where SNCC workers organized early efforts at community control of public schools; in Los Angeles, where SNCC helped monitor local police and joined an effort at creating a 'Freedom City' in black neighborhoods; and in Chicago, where SNCC workers began to build an independent political party and demonstrated against segregated schools.</blockquote>As part of this northern community-organizing strategy, SNCC seriously considered an alliance with [[Saul Alinsky]]'s mainstream-church supported [[Industrial Areas Foundation]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/alinsky.htm "Excerpt From SNCC Central Committee Meeting Regarding Forging a Relation With Saul Alinsky January, 1967"'], January 20, 1967.</ref> But Alinsky had little patience or understanding for SNCC's new rhetoric. On stage with Carmichael in Detroit, Alinsky was scathing when, pressed for an example of "Black Power", the SNCC leader cited the IAF's-mentored FIGHT community organization in [[Rochester, New York]]. The example was proof that Carmichael and his friends needed to stop "going round yelling 'Black Power!'" and "really go down and organize." It is simple, according to Alinsky: it's "called...community power, and if the community is black, it's black power."<ref>Sanford Horwitt (1989) ''Let Them Call Me Rebel: The Life and Legacy of Saul Alinsky''. New York. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 508</ref>

In May 1967, Carmichael relinquished the SNCC chairmanship and speaking out against U.S. policy traveled to [[Cuba]], [[China]], [[North Vietnam]], and finally to [[Ahmed Sékou Touré]]'s [[Guinea]]. Returning to the United States in January 1968 he accepted an invitation to become honorary Prime Minister of the [[Black Panther Party]] for Self Defense. Inspired by John Hulet's stand and borrowing the [[Lowndes County Freedom Organization|LCFO]]'s black panther moniker, the party had been formed by [[Bobby Seale]] and [[Huey P. Newton|Huey Newton]] in [[Oakland, California]], in October 1966.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America|last=Joseph|first=Peniel|author-link=Peniel E. Joseph|publisher=Henry Holt|year=2006|page=219}}</ref> For Carmichael the goal was a nation-wide Black United Front.<ref>Span, Paula (April 8, 1998). "The Undying Revolutionary: As Stokely Carmichael, He Fought for Black Power. Now Kwame Ture's Fighting For His Life". ''The Washington Post''. p. D01.</ref>

Carmichael's replacement, [[H. Rap Brown]] (later known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) tried to hold what he now called the Student ''National'' Coordinating Committee to an alliance with the Panthers. Like Carmichael, Rap Brown had come to view nonviolence as a tactic rather than as a foundational principle. Violence, he famously quipped, was "as American as cherry pie".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_80-74qjqrq1|title=Comm; CBS Library of Contemporary Quotations; H. Rap Brown|website=American Archive of Public Broadcasting|language=en|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref>

In June 1968 the SNCC national executive emphatically rejected the association with the Black Panthers. This was followed in July by a "violent confrontation" in New York City with [[James Forman]], who had resigned as the Panther's Minister of Foreign Affairs and was then heading up the city's SNCC operation. In the course of a "heated discussion" Panthers accompanying Carmichael and [[Eldridge Cleaver]], the Panthers' Minister of Information,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://nyage.net/forman_embodied_a_range_of_str.HTM|title=James Forman Tribute|date=2006-02-16|access-date=2019-12-17|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060216221203/http://nyage.net/forman_embodied_a_range_of_str.HTM|archive-date=2006-02-16}}</ref> reportedly thrust a pistol was into Forman's mouth.<ref name="Fraser">{{cite news |last1=Fraser |first1=C. Gerald |title=S.N.C.C. in decline after 8 years in the lead |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/10/07/issue.html |access-date=10 January 2021 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=October 7, 1968}}</ref> For Forman and SNCC this was "the last straw". Carmichael was expelled ("engaging in a power struggle" that "threatened the existence of the organization")<ref>Carson (1995). p. 292</ref>—and "Forman wound up first in hospital, and later in Puerto Rico, suffering from a nervous breakdown".<ref>[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19680926&id=HcIwAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KFwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6199,3660800 "SNCC Crippled by Defection of Carmichael"], ''Washington Post'' news service (''St. Petersburgh Times''), September 26, 1968.</ref><ref name="Fraser" />

The ''New York Times'' reported that it was the "opinion of most people in the movement" that the SNCC Carmichael had left was "pre-Watts", while the Panthers were "post-Watts". The 1965 [[Watts riots]] in Los Angeles, they believed, had marked  "the end of the middle-class-oriented civil right movement".<ref name="Fraser" />

Rap Brown himself resigned as SNCC chairman after being indicted for inciting to riot in [[Cambridge, Maryland]], in 1967. On March 9, 1970, two SNCC workers, Ralph Featherstone and William ("Che") Payne, died on a road approaching [[Bel Air, Harford County, Maryland|Bel Air, Maryland]], when a bomb on the front floorboard of their car exploded. The bomb's origin is disputed: some say the bomb was planted in an assassination attempt, and others say Payne was intentionally carrying it to the courthouse where Brown was to be tried.<ref>{{cite magazine |first=Todd |last=Holden |title=Bombing: A Way of Protest and Death |magazine=Time |date=1970-03-23 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943178-1,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604114354/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,943178-1,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 4, 2011 |access-date=2010-02-14}}</ref>