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SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
Harvard University Press
April 1995
On Sale: April 3, 1995
373 pages
ISBN: 0674447271
EAN: 9780674447271
Paperback
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Non-Fiction History
With its radical ideology and effective tactics, the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was the
cutting edge of the civil rights movement during the 1960s.
This sympathetic yet even-handed book records for the first
time the complete story of SNCC's evolution, of its
successes and its difficulties in the ongoing struggle to
end white repression. At its birth, SNCC was composed of black college students
who shared an ideology of moral radicalism. This ideology,
with its emphasis on nonviolence, challenged Southern
segregation. SNCC students were the earliest civil rights
fighters of the Second Reconstruction. They conducted
sit-ins at lunch counters, spearheaded the freedom rides,
and organized voter registration, which shook white
complacency and awakened black political consciousness. In
the process, Carson shows, SNCC changed from a group that
endorsed white middle-class values to one that questioned
the basic assumptions of liberal ideology and raised the
fist for black power. Indeed, SNCC's radical and penetrating
analysis of the American power structure reached beyond the
black community to help spark wider social protests of the
1960s, such as the anti-Vietnam War movement. Carson's history of SNCC goes behind the scene to determine
why the group's ideological evolution was accompanied by
bitter power struggles within the organization. Using
interviews, transcripts of meetings, unpublished position
papers, and recently released FBI documents, he reveals how
a radical group is subject to enormous, often divisive
pressures as it fights the difficult battle for social change.
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