1960 - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

SNCC

Capitalizing on the momentum of the Sit-in movement,  the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960.

• Over the next few years, SNCC served as one of the leading forces in the civil rights movement, organizing Freedom Rides through the South in 1961 and the historic March on Washington in 1963, at which Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his seminal “I Have a Dream” speech.
• SNCC worked alongside the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to push passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and would later mount an organized resistance to the Vietnam War.
• As its members faced increased violence, however, SNCC became more militant, and by the late 1960s it was advocating the “Black Power” philosophy of Stokely Carmichael (SNCC’s chairman from 1966-67) and his successor, H. Rap Brown. By the early 1970s, SNCC had lost much of its mainstream support and was effectively disbanded.