The Question of SNCC

The Question of SNCC . Jack Newfield The real and exact job of a cop: STOP hood of organizers, poets, hipsters ther King, the young anti-heroes of STOP and visionaries has grown up to SNCC h ave adopted a rotating or that is also true have a staff of 200 full-time paid egalitarian style of leadership that of executive committees workers in the field, plus 250 full baffles the rest of the movement. and every government and time volunteers; an annual budget Whenever there is a summit con organization in the whole world of $800,000, and an evolving philos ference of the civil rights leader except ophy unburdened by obsolete blue ship, Dr. King, James Farmer, Roy small quiclt ones prints for utopia from other genera Wilkins and Whitney Young never and plain people tions or other countries. SNCC is know which of a dozen possible rep who love. simply the sum of its experiences resentatives of SNCC will show up. -Jane Stembridge inside the eye of the American Di Ask a SNCC worker, "Who is the SNCC staff lemma. head of SNCC?" and he'll reply, SNCC is more a chaotic move "Man, we don't h ave any leaders" or More than five years have now ment than a conventional civil "The people lead SNCC because passed since the Student Nonviolent rights organization; the best image they tell us what to do. We don't Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for it is that of an amoeba with tell them." was formed during an Easter week pseudopods reaching out in many The two most visible personali end conference on the campus of directions. Compared to the well ties in SNCC are Chairman John Shaw University in Raleigh. N.C. organized and disciplined Southern Lewis; introverted, the veteran of Since then, this battered brother- Christian Leadership Conference thirty-nine arrests and an ordained ( SCLC), SNCC is a happening. minister; and 37-year-old Executive ]ach Newfield is an assistant editor of Recoiling from the "cult of per Secretary James Forman. While The Village Voice, New York. sonality'' that surrounds Martin Lu- Lewis' title is largely ceremonial, 38 The NATION~ a_ 0' Forman, with great organizational like Stokley Carmichael, white columnists Rowland Evans and Rob skills and the instincts of a Marine Southerners like Robert Zellner and ert Novack (there have been eight sergeant, has become the most pow- former sharecroppers like Mrs. een so far). This hostility has been erful individual in SNCC. But his V'Fannie Lou Hamer. extended by similarly acid criti troops' passion for spontaneit , indi- Some of the whites are trying to cisms from liberals with solid civil vidualism and freedom i mar act black-"clappin' to Ray Charles rights credentials-Joseph Raub of that he is still far from being a cords on the wrong beat," says the ADA, Roy Wilkins of the "leader" in the conventional sense. Sto Carmichael; some of the NAACP and others. And last May, Although he has relinquished all blacks are trying to atone for once during a public debate in New York formal titles, 30-year-old Robert acting white. Embryonic black na City, Socialist Irving Howe described Parris is SNCC's other center of tionalists find a few white maso SNCC as "bureaucratically deform gravity. He seems to combine the chists to prey on, and the West In ed, manipulative and undemocratic," dian Negroes feel guilty because which must rank as the least in their grandfathers weren't planta formed and most condescending de tion slaves. scription since Tony Galento called Because of this pluralism within Joe Louis a bum. a framework of individualism, only These attacks are now beginning a few generalizations fit all of the to take cumulative effect. Founda animal called SNCC. It is nonvio tions are starting to withhold funds, lent and profoundly democratic. Its as are most international unions. strength derives from grass-roots in A HUAC investigation of SNCC is volvement with the very poor. being talked of for this fall. Such Strongly anarchic in spirit (but not pOi'tents have led a sizable segment in program), SNCC instills in its of SNCC to predict "a new wave of workers skepticism of all bureauc McCarthyism," aimed not only racy and all centralized authority against them but also against the including its own. And SNCC professors, students and clergy who preaches and practices participatory have energized opposition to the democracy-the concept that every war in Vietnam. one should take part in all the de It is in this newly embittered cisions that affect his life. With frame of mind that SNCC is now this goes an almost mystical faith ending a period of introspection and in the ability of "the little people" consolidation to begin the simul the lumpen proletariat- to change taneous exploration of three new their condition and govern them areas: the urban centers of the selves democratically; a v1s10n South, Democratic Party politics, which seems to be the antithesis of and an attempt to build a national Communist elitism and authori protest movement that would "use tarianism. morality'' to synthesize civil rights To watch a SNCC worker func with peace, civil liberties and anti qualities of the saintly revolutionist tion in the rural South is to see poverty movements. Kropotkin with the existentialist democracy in its purest and rawest Throughout its history, SNCC has philosopher Camus. Parris, who form. He doesn't manipulate, con worked almost exclusively in rural was the first SNCC field secretary trol or direct discussions at mass counties - the Mississippi delta, to penetrate Mississippi in 1961, meetings. Instead, he devotes his southwest Georgia and the black has now, despite his flight from attention to encouraging the least belt of Arkansas and Alabama. But leadership, become the ideologue articulate sympathizers with the during the last two months, projects for a major current of thinking movement to express them selves have been opened up in Montgom within the whole student activist without embarrassment. The best ery, Birmingham and Atlanta. Last movement; it is the group whose of the SNCC workers sound more May, Fred Meely, a 23-year-old vet values seem rooted in the humanist like teachers or therapists than like eran of the Mississippi campaigns, and anarchist tradition, rather than organizers or agita~ors. sat in the deserted SNCC store-front in Marxist dogma; those who put headquarters in Montgomery and the emphasis on freedom rather SNCC's mood-as its troops talked about the difficulties of ur than movement. depart from Washington after the ban orgrulizing: Among the staff of more than lobby for the Freedom Democratic All surnmer we just might sit here 200, there flourishes a staggering Party's (FDP) Congressional chal and build a base in the community. diversity that is probably SNCC's lenge- is dominated by memories It doesn't mean anything that we greatest resource. There are field of wounds recently inflicted by lib don't have an active program going workers with masters' degrees and eral friends. A year ago, before the yet. We're not concerned with time. those with only public school edu Democratic convention fight over W e're just going to let the people in cation; there ru:e blacks and whites seating the FDP delegation, the the community know we're here, consensus image of SNCC among become involved in their daily lives, (about sixty), boys and girls; and find out what it is they want Northerners and Southerners; there middle-class liberals was one of us to do. are rambunctious teen-agers and idealized sacrifice and purity. But The cities are a whole new ex stooped adults in their 60s; there after the convention there began a perience for us. Size is something are gifted poets like Jane Stem venomous flow of redbaiting, beat new to u s. So is the problem of deal bridge, complex Negro intellectuals nik-baiting attacks from syndicated ing with an existing Negro leader- July 19, 1965 3a ship that is conservative and cor rupt like the ·ministers and lawyers here in Montgomery. This middle class doesn't exist in places like Greenwood or Holly Springs. Another reason the cities are so hard to crack is that Negroes here are much less open to the idea of nonviolence. And they are more apathetic. They have a whole different set of values from rural farmers. There is a hard core of hate and violence in every black man in this city. Dozens of Negroes get cut up in fights every Saturday night. Even those people w ho come into the office looking for help are filled with hostility and loohing for a fight. In exploring the cities, SNCC's strategy has been to give priority to organizing "those' people most dam aged by the society" - junkies, winoes, prostitutes, dropouts, petty killed in the South because the gov criminals and the m entally disturb lator. He will organize people's c,on ferences throughout his district and ernment has a certain attitude to ed; a tactic that is based more on ward killing in Vietnam. The con Genet's existential conception of the ask people what they want him to do. He will get people in the com cept that it is all right to kill an under class than on the economic 'enemy' affects the morality of the one of Marx. Right now, SNCC in munity talking to one another di rectly, rather than to him. He will country so that people can be mur Montgomery seems to be beating dered here." its head bloody trying to organize seek to develop indigenous leader s Parris adds: "Most liberals think the most brutalized proletariat in hip that can replace him in the legislature.

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