Rebellious to Revolutionary: SNCC and its Transformative Activism
Public Deposited- Creator
-
Staimpel, Saskia
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies
- Abstract
- The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snik”) was formed in 1960 to give an organizational expression to the unprecedented rise in student activism during the civil rights movement. In its beginning, SNCC sought to use nonviolent tactics to confront and dismantle the Jim Crow segregation that oppressed Black Americans across the country. As SNCC’s focus shifted from dismantling segregation to organizing outside of the political institutions that did not represent them, its members recognized the systemic nature of the oppression and injustice they were fighting. This revolutionary understanding of Black oppression led SNCC members to both realize the limitations of nonviolent tactics and to embrace Black self-determination, self-empowerment, and self-defense. SNCC’s full embodiment of these principles at the height of its activism in the late 1960s coincided with the emergence of the Black Power movement that held these principles and grassroots organizing as some of their major tenets. This article examines SNCC’s activism from its inception in 1960 to its peak in 1966, demonstrating how its grassroots activism in the face of extreme racial violence and lack of government protection and support transformed what its members believed Black liberation should look like and how it could be achieved.
- Date of publication
- 2021
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Article
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Journal title
- Global Africana Review
- Journal volume
- 5
- Journal issue
- 1
- Page start
- 38
- Page end
- 49
- Language
- English
Relations
- Parents:
- In Collection:
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