Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

==1961 Freedom Rides==
Organized by the [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE) to dramatize the southern states' disregard of the Supreme Court rulings ([[Morgan v. Virginia|''Morgan v. Virginia'', 1946]] and [[Boynton v. Virginia|''Boynton v. Virginia'', 1960]]) outlawing segregation in interstate transportation, in May 1961, the first [[Freedom Rides|Freedom Riders]] (seven black, six white, led by CORE director [[James Farmer]]) travelled together on interstate buses. In [[Anniston, Alabama|Anniston]], [[Alabama]], they were brutally attacked by mobs of [[Ku Klux Klan]]smen. Local police stood by. After they were assaulted again in [[Birmingham, Alabama]], and under pressure from the [[Presidency of John F. Kennedy|Kennedy Administration]], CORE announced it was discontinuing the action. Undeterred, [[Diane Nash]] called for new riders. [[Oretha Castle Haley]], Jean C. Thompson, Rudy Lombard, [[James Bevel]], [[Marion Barry]], Angeline Butler, [[Stokely Carmichael]], and [[Joan Trumpauer Mulholland]] joined [[John Lewis]] and [[Hank Thomas]], the two young SNCC members of the original Ride. They traveled on to a savage beating in [[Montgomery, Alabama]], to arrest in [[Jackson, Mississippi]], and to confinement in the Maximum Security (Death Row) Unit of the infamous [[Mississippi State Penitentiary]]--"Parchman Farm".<ref>{{cite web |title=Freedom Riders |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/people/roster |date=2011 |publisher=[[American Experience]], [[Public Broadcasting Service|PBS]] |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170107073734/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/people/roster/ |archive-date=2017-01-07}}</ref>

Recognizing SNCC's determination, CORE and the SCLC rejected the Administration's call for a "cooling off" period and joined with the students in a Freedom Riders Coordinating Committee to keep the Rides rolling through June and into September. During those months, more than 60 different Freedom Rides criss-crossed the South,<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/riders/frmap.htm Freedom Ride Map] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080205112129/http://www.crmvet.org/riders/frmap.htm |date=2008-02-05}}. Retrieved February 1, 2010.</ref> most of them converging on Jackson, where every Rider was arrested, more than 300 in total. An unknown number were arrested in other Southern towns, and many were beaten including, in [[Monroe, North Carolina]], SNCC's Executive Secretary [[James Forman]]. It is estimated that almost 450 people, black and white in equal number, participated.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961frides Freedom Rides] ~ Civil Rights Movement Archive.</ref>

With CORE, SNCC had been making plans for a mass demonstration in Washington when Attorney General [[Robert F. Kennedy]] finally prevailed on the [[Interstate Commerce Commission]] (ICC) to issue rules giving force to the repudiation of the "[[separate but equal]]" doctrine. After the new ICC rules took effect on November 1, 1961, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains; "white" and "colored" signs were to be removed from the terminals (lunch counters, drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms) serving interstate customers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Arsenault |first=Raymond |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GpAzYZnAqcoC |title=Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice |date=2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-979296-2 |pages=271 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Sharp |first=Anne Wallace |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7IhmDwAAQBAJ |title=The Freedom Rides |date=2012 |publisher=Greenhaven Publishing LLC |isbn=978-1-4205-0732-4 |pages=86–88 |language=en}}</ref>

To test the ICC ruling and in the hope of mobilizing the local black community in a broader campaign, in October 1961 SNCC members [[Charles Sherrod]] and [[Cordell Reagon]] led a sit-in at the bus terminal in [[Albany, Georgia]]. By mid-December, having drawn in the [[NAACP]] and a number of other organizations, the [[Albany Movement]] had more than 500 protesters in jail.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Albany Movement |url=https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/albany-movement/ |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=New Georgia Encyclopedia |language=en-US}}</ref> There they were joined briefly by [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] and by [[Ralph Abernathy]]. King sought advantage in the national media attention his arrest had drawn. In return for the city's commitment to comply with the ICC ruling and to release those protesters willing to post bail, he agreed to leave town. The city reneged, however, so protests and subsequent arrests continued into 1962.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/albany-movement|title=Albany Movement|date=Apr 24, 2017|website=The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute|accessdate=Apr 2, 2023}}</ref>

News reports across the country portrayed the Albany debacle as "one of the most stunning defeats" in King's career.<ref>David Miller, "A Loss for Dr. King—New Negro Roundup: They Yield," ''New York Herald Tribune'', 19 December 1961.</ref> What they also reported was conflict with SNCC. The ''[[New York Times]]'' noted that King's SCLC had taken steps "that seemed to indicate they were assuming control" of the movement in Albany, and that the student group had "moved immediately to recapture its dominant position on the scene." If the differences between the organizations were not resolved, the paper predicted "tragic consequences".<ref>Claude Sitton, "Rivalries Beset Integration Campaigns," ''New York Times'', 24 December 1961.</ref>