Talk:Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

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Talk Page
This was an apparent question that was placed in the article instead of the talk page. the exact text is as follows: {Why did Richard Nixon Only Serve 6 Years?.... and whats a franchise? } I deleted it from the page and am placing it here. -- preschooler @  heart   my talk  -  contribs  15:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Carmichael, in his autobiography Ready for Revolution claims that SNCC didn't expel its white staffers, and merely reassigned them to back offices in the North, citing safety concerns (whites were targetted at least as intensely as blacks, in order to intimidate other whites from assisting). --Eric 07:09, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

As read in the book Black power, I was wondering if there could be more expanded information on this topic. "SNCC believed that in order to break through racist Mississippi society, black people must awaken their potential political power." Mss97 (talk) 22:06, 21 January 2018 (UTC)Mss97

MFDP, Atlantic City, and SNCC
The following was cut: "After the Democratic convention of 1964 <> ..." I'm curious why that reference to the Demo Convention was cut. The rejection of the MFDP challenge to the MS delegation was seen by SNCC as an enormous betrayal on the part of the liberal establishment. It was the critical tipping-point that began moving many SNCC activists away from reform and towards revolutionary ideologies. The splits in SNCC that are referenced later in the article were grounded in what happened in Atlantic City in August of 1964. Brucehartford (talk) 18:26, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it was cut because there wasn't a great source to back up the information, this article is in need of some citation work. I also found that the information on the MFDP delegation to the convention was lacking. I suggest adding a reputable source to the information such as Ehanawal (talk) 02:28, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

Cuts and Comments
I took out the following text, not because it wasn't interesting, but because it focused on a relatively minor aspect of the history of SNCC:


 * However, the last SNCC chapter in the United States was in San Antonio, Texas. It was disbanded in 1976 with its members going on to form civil and human rights groups called Organizations United for Eastside Development and later Frontline 2000. Frontline 2000 would be responsible for obtaining a Martin Luther King State Holiday in Texas after negotiations with former Speaker of the Texas House Gib Lewis.


 * This SNCC chapter was a hybrid organization that was part White Panther Party and part SNCC. Members of the organization adopted Black Panther styled survival programs.  Their uniforms were the old southern styled blue jean pants and blue jean jackets with a Panther Black tam.  The chapter sold SNCC papers and White Panthers in downtown San Antonio.  Its office was once located at the corner of Iowa and Pine Streets in San Antonio in the Denver Heights area. The organization was started by SNCC Field organizer Carlos Richardson and its initial members included Ouncy Whittier, Mario Marcel Salas, Claudius Minor, Roslyn Lewis, Carl Jackson, Webb Boyd, and others.


 * The San Antonio Chapter of SNCC organized around the killing of Bobby Joe Phillips, an African American man beaten to death in 1968 by San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) officers. The group protested the beating by organizing a massive demonstration in downtown San Antonio during the River parade. This incident would be one of four known "riots" that occurred in San Antonio. The SNCC office would be attacked by SAPD soon after the "riot" as SNCC militants were accused of conducting military drills at their office.

I also cut


 * SNCC is recognized today as one of the primary influences on the modern youth activism movement.

Perhaps someone can supply some authority for this proposition. I admit to being somewhat skeptical of any links to that article, which is in need of editing and rethinking.

As for what remains, it needs a good deal of reworking. The birth of SNCC and its role in the sit-in movement get barely a mention, With all the sources referenced in this piece we can do better. Italo Svevo 04:30, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I made some changes to the section on the March on Washington (1963) because I think it had some inaccuracies. The speech has not been properly referenced; I followed the reference and found two different versions of the speech, but not the version quoted in the Wikipedia section (unless I missed it). Despite ackowledging that the speech was changed, the section did not show awareness of how it was changed and why and, indeed, quoted an earlier draft of the speech rather than the version that was read on that day. My chief source for these amendments is James Forman's book on SNCC, which is referenced. But, the reference originally given by the previous author also confirms this, since the censored version given on the website "Veterans of the Civil War" is not the same as the version quoted originally in the wikipedia article section. I am new to wikipedia, so feel free to tidy up my amendments, but please don't change the substance (i.e. the acknowledgment of the different versions that exist, and what was changed and why). --C.Witter — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.44.63.92 (talk) 04:22, 14 July 2011 (UTC) Could I enquire as to how H.Rap Brown changed the name of the organisation to the Student National Co-ordinating Committee when it says that he resigned from SNCC in 1968 and it has been stated previously that the name was not changed until 1969? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.3.123 (talk) 17:10, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Martin Luther King Jr
Ive found only one mention of Martin Luther King Jr in the article even though he was a major part of SNCC and its works — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.34.173.139 (talk) 23:21, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the problem is. Martin Luther King was the leader of SCLC, another civil rights organisation. Although there was some cooperation between SNCC and SCLC, and between SNCC activists and King, the two were not only independent of each other but on occasion antagonistic. James Forman, the SNCC National Executive Secretary, is in several places highly critical of King in his book The Making of Black Revolutionaries (1971), and particularly of the cult like status King achieved. --- C. Witter — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.44.63.92 (talk) 03:52, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree; while reading the book " Black Power" I didn't find much information on how Martin Luther King Jr contributed to the SNCC. I found that in the book he was more like an influence on how the people reacted when their own kind was hurt. As stated here " Each time the black people in those cities saw Dr. Martin Luther King get slapped they became angry. When they saw little black girls bombed to death in a church and civil rights workers ambushed and murdered, they were angrier; and when nothing happened, they were steaming mad." Mss97 (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2018 (UTC)Mss97

Removed Reference to Modern SNCC at University of Louisville
I removed the following:


 * SNCC has begun again at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. Student Organizations - University of Louisville

This article is about the SNCC of the 1960s. If a new organization has been formed using the same name, it should be discussed in a separate Wikipedia article. Brucehartford (talk) 18:40, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Many factual errors
192.249.1.145 (talk) 20:24, 7 May 2013 (UTC)I don't have the time to correct these at the moment, but there are several. The first one that sticks out to me is regarding Carmichael and the BPP. Despite this article's claim, he never officially joined the party, hence the title honorary that is often placed in front of his name when discussed in relation to the BPP. He discusses this in length in Ready for Revolution.

sncc and feminism
why does donna richards link to a comic book artist? this error confirms the inaccuracy of this article. either correct the errors, reach to clayborne carson, or delete the whole entry. truth is better than lies!

Bizarre whitewash of treatment of women within SNCC; there's plenty of scholarship and oral history detailing the way women were pushed to the back. Google of "women in sncc" brings up at the top a document from 1964, and there's plenty more where that came from" http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SNCC_women.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.152.123.251 (talk) 23:04, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Removal of incorrect mention of paper by Ruby Doris Robinson
I removed a reference to a paper on "The Position of Women in SNCC" supposedly presented by Ruby Doris Robinson at a SNCC conference in 1964. No such paper was ever written by her or presented. The reference cited (Feminist Chronicles - 1966) makes no mention of her or SNCC. This error has been circulating around the internet for some time. See Women, SNCC, and Stokely for more information on this incorrect factoid. Brucehartford (talk) 17:22, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

Removal of incorrect info regarding dissolution of COFO
I deleted an addition saying the COFO was the primary interface between the Mississippi movement and white supporters in the North and that COFO was dissolved because of efforts to take it over by some northerners who opposed SNCC policies. The speech by Julian Bond that was cited as the source does not support either of those assertions. While COFO did interface with northern supporters that was by no means its primary purpose which was to coordinate the state activities of SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and SCLC and to administer voter registration funds from the Voter Education Project. COFO did not dissolve in 1964, but continued into 1965. It's eventual dissolution was mainly caused by the withdrawal of the NAACP and the reality that its oranizing roll had been supplanted by the MFDP (and later the Delta Ministry). Brucehartford (talk) 19:18, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

By whatever other name.
Why isn't it mentioned that the SNCC Quickly became known as the Nonstudent Violence Coordinating Committee? I bet if you included that it would be immediately deleted by a moderator or a member of the violence "tribe". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:0:8A80:15E2:AD71:72DF:DA0A:A11E (talk) 14:19, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Lewis and McDew
I just reverted an IP who changed the dates that these two headed SNCC. After checking further I found that their individual wikipedia articles provided different dates on when Lewis replaced McDew. I did a Google search and got the same differences. So, did McDew leave in 1963 or 1964? Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:15, 21 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Lewis was elected SNCC Chairman in 1963. It was as the head of SNCC that he spoke at the March on Washington. Had McDew still be Chair, he would have been the one to speak. Brucehartford (talk) 20:16, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

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adding info to infobox title
Hey, -- I'm not sure that addition to the title of the infobox is very useful to readers. It seemed to kind of just make it really long. What is your thinking? --valereee (talk) 12:33, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Dissolution date
The article seems to say that the organization ceased activities in 1970, although mentions an FBI report filed in 1973. The infobox says the organization dissolved in 1976. Can we clarify this? Daask (talk) 14:39, 13 August 2020 (UTC)


 * We don't see where the 1976 date in the infobox comes from. The article notes that that there was no chairman after 1969, and that "By the beginning of 1970, [FBI} surveillance had everywhere effectively ceased for lack of SNCC activity—save in New York City from where the last FBI report was filed in December 1973." It seems 1970 would be the most appropriate date. ManfredHugh (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

History section
It seems to me that the sections through  should be made into subsections of a new  section. The outline of this portion of the article would then be as follows:


 * History (new section)
 * #1960: Emergence from the sit-in movement
 * #1961 Freedom Rides
 * #1962 voter registration campaigns
 * #1963 March on Washington
 * #1964 Freedom Summer
 * #1965: Differences over "structure" and direction
 * #1966: Black Power movement
 * #Carmichael and the Vine Street Project Statement
 * #Lowndes County
 * #Interracial coalition
 * #Opposition to the Vietnam War
 * #1967–1968: Resignation of Carmichael and search for allies
 * #1969–1970: Dissolution
 * 1970–current: Legacy (this would be a new section)
 * #Women in the SNCC (this would remain a top-level section)
 * ... (everything below would remain unchanged)

What do you think? If I don't hear something by the end of the year, I may just be bold and make the change myself. -- RobLa (talk) 11:52, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

That's okay, but I am not sure of the rationale. "Women in the SNCC" is part of its history.ManfredHugh (talk)

Propose for A-Class assessment
This article is currently a tour-de-force treatment of the topic. Per the [Wikipedia:Content assessment/A-Class criteria|A-Class criteria], two uninvolved editors must concur before this assessment can be official.

-- Carwil (talk) 19:47, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Currently WP:MILHIST and WP:USROADS are some of the only major projects with a process for conducting A-class reviews. This article falls under neither project. I would start with WP:GAR. A-class is a higher rating than GA. Schierbecker (talk) 20:12, 21 March 2024 (UTC)