Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

==="Sex and Caste"===
Among the Position Papers circulated at Waveland conference in 1964, number 24 ("name withheld by request") opened with the observation that the "large committee" formed to present "crucial constitutional revisions" to the staff "was all men." After cataloguing a number of other instances in which women appear to have been sidelined, it went on to suggest that "assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every much as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro."<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/SNCC/doc43.htm|title=Document 43, Position Paper #24, (women in the movement), November 1964, Waveland, Mississippi|website=womhist.alexanderstreet.com|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref>

This paper was not the first time women had raised questions about their roles in SNCC.  In the spring of 1964, a group of black and white SNCC staffers had sat-in at James Forman's office in Atlanta to protest at being burdened, and stymied in their contributions, by the assumption that it was they, the women, who would see to minute taking and other mundane office, and housekeeping, tasks: "No More Minutes Until Freedom Comes to the Atlanta Office" was [[Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson]]'s placard. Like Mary King,<ref>Lynne Olson (2001). ''Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970''. Simon Shuster. p. 334</ref> [[Judy Richardson]] recalls the protest as being "half playful (Forman actually appearing supportive), although "the other thing was, we're not going to do this anymore."<ref name=":6">{{Cite web|url=https://scalar.usc.edu/works/sex-and-caste-at-50/1964-sncc-position-paper-on-women-in-the-movement|title=Sex and Caste at 50: 1964 SNCC Position Paper on Women in the Movement|website=Sex and Caste at 50|accessdate=Apr 2, 2023}}</ref> The same might be said of the Waveland paper itself. With so many women themselves "insensitive" to the "day-to-day discriminations" (who is asked to take minutes, who gets to clean Freedom House), the paper concluded that, "amidst the laughter," further discussion might be the best that could be hoped for.<ref name=":6" />

At the time, and in "the Waveland setting," [[Casey Hayden]], who with Mary King was soon outed as one of the authors, regarded the paper as "definitely an aside."<ref>{{Cite web|last=Hayden|first=Casey|author-link=Casey Hayden|date=2010|title=In the Attics of My Mind|url=[https://www.crmvet.org/comm/hayden.htm|access-date=2020-12-29|website= ][[Civil Rights Movement Archive]]|type=Written for ''Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC}}</ref> But in the course of 1965, while working on leave for the SDS organizing women in Chicago, Hayden was to reconsider. Seeking to further "dialogue within the movement," Hayden circulated an extended version of the "memo" among 29 SNCC women veterans and, with King, had it published in the [[War Resisters League]] magazine ''Liberation'' under the title "Sex and Caste". Employing the movement's own rhetoric of race relations, the article suggested that, like African Americans, women can find themselves "caught up in a common-law caste system that operates, sometimes subtly, forcing them to work around or outside hierarchical structures of power."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/SNCC/revisiting.htm|title=Revisiting "A Kind of Memo" from Casey Hayden and Mary King (1965)|website=womhist.alexanderstreet.com|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/SNCC/doc86A.htm|title=Casey Hayden (aka Sandra Cason) and Mary King, "Sex and Caste," 18 November 1965|website=womhist.alexanderstreet.com|access-date=2019-12-17}}</ref> Viewed as a bridge between civil rights and women's liberation, "Sex and Caste" has since been regarded as a "key text of [[second-wave feminism]]."<ref>Jacobs, E (2007), ' Revisiting the Second Wave: In Conversation with Mary King ' ''Meridians'', vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 102–116 .</ref><ref name="Document98"/>