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From Sit-Ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s
“Central to the collection’s theme is the idea that [SNCC] was diffuse with different visions, and not a hierarchy. The approach was local, and the results hinged on the locality. . . . Adds much to the discussion of the nonviolent resistance movement.”— Choice “Provides fresh and original insights into the student protest movement of the 1960s. A must for anyone interested in the history of the SNCC or the civil rights struggle.”—Kevern Verney, Edge Hill University The contributors provide provocative analyses of such topics as the dynamics of grassroots student civil rights activism, the organizational and cultural changes within SNCC, the impact of the sit-ins on the white South, the evolution of black nationalist ideology within the student movement, works of fiction written by movement activists, and the changing international outlook of student-organized civil rights movements.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
About the author
Iwan W. Morgan
26 books2 followersIwan Morgan is Professor of US Studies and Head of US Programmes at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. He also holds an honorary position as Commonwealth Fund Chair of American History in the UCL Department of History.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 30, 2018
This book is a look at the rise and fall of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) through the lens of 10 different essays. Each essay concentrates on a different view of the impact of the student-led protests starting with the 1960 Greensboro sit-in that led to the organization of SNCC. Topics covered include the effects of the sit-ins on white southern segregationists, the black power movement, the British and international civil rights movements, fictional writing by activists, and the election of Barack Obama.
SNCC may have gone by the wayside, but the impact of the direct action peaceful protests of the 1960s is still seen today. This book is really more about SNCC than it is about the sit-ins, but it was these protests that brought the organization together and started a wave of student activism.
SNCC may have gone by the wayside, but the impact of the direct action peaceful protests of the 1960s is still seen today. This book is really more about SNCC than it is about the sit-ins, but it was these protests that brought the organization together and started a wave of student activism.
January 18, 2021
Like so much of American history, the Civil Rights Movement, born of a necessary and overdue transformation toward equal recognition of blacks, also preyed on the “pathological insecurities” of whites inclined to believe, in a paternal sense, that their counterparts were content with the status quo. But the movement was often plagued by the intractability of its own leading figures and ideals, a message that this book illustrates well. What began in February of 1960 with four students in Greensboro, North Carolina sitting peacefully at an unwelcome lunch counter turned into a nationally and globally recognized movement by April of that same year, organized under the title of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and welcoming anyone at all who wished to support their cause, regardless of race. Five years later, leaders were no longer students, white supremacists had reacted so violently to the sit-ins that non-violence seemed grossly naive, and white participants throughout the SNCC leadership were vanquished from the ranks of what was to become a purely Black Power movement, thus crumbing in on its own objectives of equality. To understand the origins of nonviolent protest is to concede that even the most peaceful actors, the Kings of nonviolence if you will, have still found themselves at the receiving end of a bullet, which ought to signal not our collective recognition of equality, but our collective recognition of historically violent incivility, despite so many efforts to the contrary.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews