(audience talking)
♪ I ain't gonna make it shine ♪
♪ Well, I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ I ain't gonna make it shine ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ My god, I ain't gonna make it shine, yeah ♪
♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪
♪ Let it shine ♪
♪ Well, I aint gonna let nobody turn me round ♪
♪ Oh Lord, turn me round ♪
♪ Turn me round ♪
♪ Ain't gonna let nobody turn me round ♪
♪ I'm gonna keep on walkin' ♪
♪ And keep on talkin' ♪
♪ Marchin' up to freedom's land ♪
♪ Yeah, don't you let nobody ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ Ain't gonna let nobody ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ Keep on walkin' ♪
♪ Keep on talkin' ♪
♪ Marchin' up to freedom's land ♪
♪ Don't you let injustice ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ Don't you let injustice ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ You gotta keep on walkin' ♪
♪ Keep on talkin' ♪
♪ Marchin' up to freedom's land. ♪
♪ Don't you let no thoughts ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ Don't you let no thoughts ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ You gotta keep on walkin' ♪
♪ Keep on talkin' ♪
♪ Marchin' up to freedom's land ♪
♪ Don't you let nobody ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ Don't you let nobody ♪
♪ Turn you round ♪
♪ You gotta keep on walkin' ♪
♪ Keep on talkin' ♪
♪ Marchin' up to freedom's land. ♪
(applause)
-: Someone's walking round here with extra set of glasses
and they don't know. I suppose they might be wearing it.
-: I'm sure if they're wearing it they'd know it,
they probably can't see out of them either.
-: Are you gettin' our picture here?
Hey, please you're aiming the wrong way, right here.
-: Mrs Victoria Gray-Adams will--
-: Shhhhh!
Thank you.
(laughing)
-: Okay, Mrs Victoria Gray-Adams will lead us
in the invocation.
Victoria: I am person who fully believes.
Audience: No.
Victoria: How 'bout that?
-: Put the microphone up by your mouth.
Victoria: Well, it is by my mouth, is it not?
Okay, can you hear me, now?
Audience: Yeah!
-: -[Victoria] As one who believes fully in participatory
involvement, I'm going to invite all of us
to join in this grace.
I think it's one that is probably very well known
by most of us, and those that don't know it
it shouldn't be too hard for you to
catch in or chime in. In the meantime, let us bow.
Most gracious
Father, Creator,
Sustainer of us all,
We thank you for this opportunity to come,
to be in fellowship with each other,
as we take this food which has been prepared for us,
and thank you, O Lord, that from this food,
will come strength to do those things
that we are called to do,
on behalf of peace and freedom everywhere,
now and always,
♪ Praise God from whom all ♪
♪ blessings flow ♪
♪ Praise him all creatures ♪
♪ here below ♪
♪ Praise them above ye ♪
♪ heavenly ghost ♪
♪ Praise Father, Son ♪
♪ and Holy ♪
♪ Ghost ♪
♪ Amen. ♪
(audience talking)
-: Okay.
Welcome to the conference on--
-: You gotta get right up to it, Walter; almost kiss it.
Walter: We have a number
of folk who want to welcome you to Raleigh
and to this conference.
Okay, thank you.
I'd like to recognize a few special guests before
we have some welcoming remarks.
First of all, Mrs Lucile Pain, the mother of
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox of North Carolina State University
is visiting us and is at one of the front tables.
(audience applause) Walter: Welcome Mrs Pain.
I'd also like to recognize two of the former chairs of SNCC
Who are with us, Marion Barry and Chuck McDew.
(audience applause)
Walter: And, you've already heard
one Executive Secretaries of SNCC
but we have two here with us,
Jim Forman and Cleveland Sellars.
(audience applause)
Walter: Okay, well our first welcoming remarks
will be given by Dr James West who is
the member of the Raleigh City Council from District C.
Mr West represents an area of South East Raleigh
which the Raleigh Citizens Association, building on
the momentum of The Sit-In Movement registered 1,600 voters
in the summer of 1962 with the help of John Fleming,
Vivian Irving, John Witters, and SNCC Volunteer,
Dorothy Dawson-Burlage, so.
We would like for Mr West to please come forward.
Thank you.
Mr West is a retired Professor of Agricultural Extension
at North Carolina State University.
(audience applause)
Mr West: Good afternoon to each of you.
I guess, in terms of a little side note I would like to
say that I was actively involved in the Civil Rights
Movement at North Carolina ENT in the early 60s,
working with Reverend Jesse Jackson at that time.
We layered a march on the theater down town
and desegregated the theaters, so I feel
a real part of this
efforts and the importance of the struggle that
we have been in and the challenges that we have
for the future.
To our distinguished head table,
as well as our distinguished guests and audience
and to all of you, on behalf of the Raleigh City Council
and more than 280,000 citizens of our capital city,
we are certainly proud to welcome you to our great city.
We are very proud to celebrate the 40th anniversary
of the founding of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
As you all know, working with the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
SNCC was a powerful force in the struggle for racial
equality during the 60s.
SNCC members fought that battle using nonviolent tactics.
It is very fitting, that we honor the legacy of
Miss Ella Baker, John Lewis and the young people
at that time that came together to found SNCC.
However, we cannot rest on their accomplishments of the past
and let that legacy become just a footnote in history.
We cannot leave it to others to see that these ideals
continue to become a reality.
We must not stand mute when justice is often denied
and opportunity is deferred.
Your efforts remind me of a question once posed
to a great Greek historian. The question was;
"When will justice come to Athens?"
He thought deliberately and replied,
"Justice will never come to Athens until all those
who are not injured are just as indignant as those who are."
All of us here today - no matter our birth,
our genetic cloth, the color of our skin - we must
become indignant and continue to undo racism
in any form that it may come.
When we are told that we must wait for tomorrow,
the next tomorrow, for the next generation,
or even the next election; we must reply as the
Reverend Martin Luther King did from that old Birmingham
jail that, "Now is the time and today is the day."
Through the grassroots efforts of this great organization,
we can achieve the goals set forth 40 years ago.
We must get everyone involved to finish the work
that began here in Raleigh and never settle for anything
less than the best for creating a social order
where justice and equal opportunity are the supreme ruler.
Thank you for this opportunity to welcome you all
to Raleigh, and my salute to SNCC for what you have
done in the past, so lets keep the legacy alive.
Thank you and God be with ya.
(audience applause)
Walter: We also have welcoming remarks from
Dr Marye Anne Fox, the Chancellor of North Carolina
State University. A native of Canton, Ohio, Dr Fox
received her PhD from Dartmouth in 1974.
She established a distinguished vocation record in Chemistry
as a Professor at the University of Texas from 1976 to 1998,
and served a Vice President for Research at the
University of Texas.
Since 1998, she has been Chancellor,
the highest administrative officer, at North Carolina
State University; Chancellor Fox.
(audience applause)
Dr Fox: Thank you for your invitation
to participate today and for your willingness
to accept us into this community.
We have been very pleased to participate in a partnership
in helping Shaw sponsor this activity.
We have believed in partnership for a long time
and I'm particularly happy to acknowledge several members of
the African-American Citizens Advisory Council
at North Carolina State who've been instrumental
in making today's events happen.
In particular, the Chairman Mr Everitt Ward back here.
Thank you so much, Everitt, for your leadership.
(audience applause)
Dr Fox: North Carolina State University was a very
different place when some of you were organizing SNCC
were here in the early 60s.
I'm proud to say its a very different place, now.
It's one which has embraced diversity and tries to
nurture our cultural differences and our similarities.
I think I'm very proud to say that, we would be joining
with all of us in the community, and as Langston Hughes once
said, "We all want America to be America again. Let freedom
and justice ring." Thank you, very much.
(audience applause)
Walter: Thank you, Chancellor Fox.
Before I introduce our next speaker,
I should've mentioned earlier that we are very grateful
to have with us Mrs Marlene Shaw,
the wife of Dr Talbert O. Shaw, who is seated next to
Dr Fox's mother on the first table here. Thank you.
(audience applause)
Walter: And, on behalf of the conference
I'd like to express my deep gratitude to Shaw University
for making possible this dialogue between
the returning members of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee and student, teachers, and
scholars today.
During the past three days we've learned much
about the founding of Shaw in 1865, as the first university
in the south for freedmen.
It's roll in nurturing Miss Ella Baker and so many other
activists of the Civil Rights Movement.
And, its proud history of the University that made possible,
the first national meeting of the students from
The Sit-In Movement on Easter Weekend, 1960, 40 years ago.
It's my privilege to introduce the man
who's been President of Shaw since 1987,
and who has led the University into the 21st Century.
Dr Talbert O. Shaw earned his PhD degrees from the
University of Chicago.
His years as a Professor and Administrator have been spent
at Howard University, Catholic University,
Bowie State College, Federal City College,
Princeton University, and Morgan State University.
His publications include Theological and Philosophical
Monographs, as well as, educational writings.
During Dr Shaw's tenure, student enrollment has increased
from 1,400 to 2,500. The University has expanded its
physical plans and renovated two historic buildings,
Estey Hall and Leonard Hall.
And, in 1993 President Shaw led a reform of the curriculum
making courses in Ethics and Values central to the general
education of all it's students in order to emphasize
Shaw's commitment to high personal standards
and citizenship in its graduates.
Ladies and gentleman, Dr Talbert O. Shaw.
(audience applause)
Dr Shaw: Thank you very much, Dr Jackson.
Let me welcome all of you to this historic campus.
We are very proud that you chose
to have this celebration here.
And, as Dr Fox said, we're delighted of the partnership
that she has forged with us as we
establish this celebration. I am tempted to,
of course my assigned task is to introduce the speaker.
But, I am tempted to introduce him the way the
President of the United States is introduced.
People get up and say,
"Ladies and Gentleman, the President of the United States."
The man that I'm about to present to you,
indeed, earned that type of profile.
Very few people here don't know
the honorable, Julian Bond.
You know, the dialogue continues regarding the times
and the leaders.
Does the time
provide the leader or the leader produce the time?
Dialogue continues.
Well, while you're speaking about that,
let me give you some ideas,
that place this man
in the times.
I believe the conference has streams
that prepare the speaker today for what he has done
and what he'll continue to do.
First of all, his father was a college President.
And, by the way he expressed his condolences to me
as President of Shaw University since he lived
on two college campuses; Fort Valley State
and Lincoln University.
And, when I asked him if it were the Lincoln in Missouri,
he said, "No, the real Lincoln!"
(audience laughing)
Dr Shaw: So, he has grown up on a college campus.
He knows the nervous atmosphere on the college campuses.
He's sat at the feet of Dr Martin Luther King.
It was a time when the acidity of racism was so corroding,
that there were movements across the country to change
American history.
So, the times and the preparations
produced the man today. I have a few things here
I could bring with me the biography
and it's a very long one
but I'll reduce it. He said, "Please, don't do that!"
And, by the way, those of you who are meeting me
for the first time, each time I stand before an audience
that doesn't know me fully,
I have to throw in a disclaimer.
And, that is although the University and I have the same
name, I don't own the place.
(audience laughing)
Dr Shaw: Julian Bond has been an active participant
in the movements for civil rights, economic justice,
and peace for more than three decades.
As an activist who has faced jail for his convictions,
as a veteran of more than 20 years service
in the Georgia General Assembly,
as a University Professor and a writer
who raises hard questions and proposes difficult solutions,
he has been on the cutting edge of social change since 1960.
I recall, very vividly, when this young man in his late 20s
had gotten on the civil rights path.
I was Dean of the students at a little college in the south.
And, we saw this young man, there was a refreshing contrast.
A young man with much more hair at the time.
(audience laughing)
Standing there, speaking with such maturity.
A beautiful voice, refreshing contrast.
Youth and maturity.
I still remember those days.
He was a founder in 1960, while a student
of Morehouse College, of the Atlanta Student Sit-In and
Anti-Segregation Organization, and of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and was a SNCC
Communicator/Director.
He was active in registration and campaigns throughout
the south.
Elected in 1965 to the Georgia House of Representatives,
Mr Bond was prevented from taking a seat by members
who objected to his expression, or opposition,
of the Vietnam War.
He was re-elected to his own vacancy and seated again,
and seated only after a third election.
But, the anonymous decision of the United States
Supreme Court that said that Georgia House
had violated its Civil Rights.
He was co-Chair of a challenge delegation from Georgia
to the 1968 Democratic Convention.
The challengers were successful in unseating Georgia's
regular democrats, and Bond was nominated for Vice President
but had to decline because he was so young.
In the Georgia Senate, Bond became the first Black Chair
of the Fulton County Delegation - the largest and most
diverse in the upper house - and Chair of the
Customer Affairs Committee.
During his legislative tenure, he was a co-sponsor
of more than 60 bills that became law.
Today, Mr Bond is the Chairman of the NAACP.
He holds 19 honorary degrees.
He's a distinguished Professor at the American University,
and also teaches in the University of Virginia.
So, today we have an activist,
an academician,
a father,
a husband, and a man for the times.
And, just before I present him,
I'd like Mrs Bond, who is here, to stand and be recognized.
(audience applause)
So, while the dialogue continues does the time produce the
man or the man the times.
Let me present to you a man of the times.
Dr Bond.
Dr Bond: Thank you, thank you.
(audience applause)
Dr Bond: Thank you a great deal Dr Shaw,
for that kind introduction.
And, unfortunately some of these people already know me
too well.
(audience laughing)
Dr Bond: And, like many of my colleagues here,
I am older than I was when I came to this campus
in April of 1960.
But, we're all reminded that just because
there's snow on the roof doesn't mean the fire is out below.
(audience laughing)
Dr Bond: Ella Baker said strong people
don't need strong leaders.
I'm gonna talk about some of the things
the strong people did.
You know, in early 1960s, Freedom song,
which has probably been sung this weekend before I arrived,
described the student movement of the early 1960s
in this way.
The time was 1960, the place the USA, February 1st
became a history-making day from Greensboro across the land.
The news spread far and wide as quietly and bravely
youth took a giant stride.
Heed the call, Americans all side-by-equal-side.
You know I'm not gonna sing this, Betty.
Sisters sit in dignity and brothers sit in prime.
But, this organization was described another way
by former president, Jimmy Carter, who told Mary King,
"If you wanna scare white people in Southwest Georgia,
Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference wouldn't do it. You only have to say one word;
SNCC!"
(audience laughing)
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
was founded in 1960 by southern student protesters
engaged in sit-in demonstrations against lunch-counter
segregations.
Within a year, the organization had evolved
from a coordinating to a hands-on agency
helping local leadership and rural and small-town
communities.
Participated in a variety of protest and political
and organizing campaigns.
All of which set SNCC apart from the Civil Rights
mainstream of the 1960s.
By 1965, SNCC fielded the largest staff of any
Civil Rights organization operating in the south.
It had organized nonviolent, direct action against
segregated facilities and voter registration campaigns
in Alabama, Arkansas, Marilyn, Missouri, Louisiana,
Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois,
North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi.
It had built two independent political parties.
It had organized labor unions and agricultural cooperatives.
It gave the movement for women's liberation new energy.
It helped expand the limits of political debate
within Black America.
And, it broadened the focus of the Civil Rights Movement.
Unlike mainstream Civil Rights groups, which merely sought
the integration of Blacks into the existing order,
SNCC sought structural changes in American society itself.
In 1960, the dominant organization fighting for Civil Rights
was the National Association for Advancement of
Colored People.
Its preferred method was litigation.
It achieved its greatest victory in 1954
with Brown versus Board of Education.
The NAACP lobbies Congress and Presidents to adopt
anti-segregation measures.
Its local branches were often the main Civil Rights outpost
in many communities.
And, the NAACP and multiple similar
local groups and individuals fought against what
Alden Morris calls a tripartite system of racial domination.
A system which protected the privileges of white society
which generated tremendous human suffering for Blacks.
One consequence of this segregation system
was the development of institutions
of close-knit communities, churches, schools,
organizations which nurtured and encouraged
the fight against white supremacy.
The young people who began the 1960 Sit-In Movement
lived and learned among such institutions.
The goals of the young student movement were described
to the Democratic Conventions Platform Committee
by its first Chair, Marion Barry, as seeking a community
in which man can realize the full meaning of self
which demands open relationships with others.
Barry and others declared southern students wanted to
end the racial discrimination in housing and education
and employment.
And, the goal were similarly broadly described
by James Forman in 1961 as "working full time against the
whole value system of this country, and working
towards revolution."
And, in 1963 as a program of developing, building,
and strengthening indigenous leadership.
And, by the third SNCC Chair, John Lewis set the marge
on Washington as, "Building a serious social revolution."
Well, SNCC pioneered first time races by Blacks
in the 1960s deep south.
It added foreign policy demands
to the Black political agenda
and it broadened the acceptable limits of political
discourse.
SNCC was on the vanguard in demonstrating that
independent Black politics could be successful.
Its early attempts to use Black candidates to raise issues
in races where victory was unlikely
expanded the political horizon.
SNCC's development of political parties mirrored
the philosophy that political form must follow function
and the non-hierarchal organizations
are demanded to counter the growth of personality cults
and of self-reinforcing leadership.
While organizing grassroots voter registration drives,
stick workers offered themselves as a protective barrier
between private and state-sponsored terror in the local
communities where SNCC staffers lived and worked.
SNCC workers were often more numerous and less transient
than those from other Civil Rights Organizations
and their method of operation was very different as well.
The NAACP was outlawed in Alabama in 1956
and didn't begin operating there again until 1964.
Although, NAACP activists continued under other sponsorship.
In 1962, the NAACP had one field secretary, each in
South Carolina, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi
and had regional staff headquartered in Atlanta.
Of SCLC, one historian writes, "The organization had to
adopt the strategy of hit and run. Their willingness to run
as well as hit provoked consistent criticism.
(audience laughing)
Dr Bond: SCLC mobilized, someone said. SNCC organized.
By spring of 1963, SNCC had 11 staff members
in Southwest Georgia, 20 staff in six offices
in Mississippi.
By August, SNCC had projects and had permanent staff
in a dozen Mississippi communities.
In Selma, in Danville, in Pinebluff Arkansas.
12 workers in the Atlanta headquarters.
60 field secretaries.
And, 121 full time volunteers.
Typically, SNCC began a campaign by researching
the economical and political history of a community.
Field workers would be supplied with detailed information
on a community's economic and power structure,
tracing corporate relationships from local bankers
and business leadership in a local white citizens council to
the largest American banks and corporations.
And, in one instance, to the Queen of England herself.
Remember, Jack Minnis drew this chart
from the Delta of Mississippi,
to the Queens Palace in London.
The Queen a shareholder in one of those devil places
in Mississippi.
What was it?
-: Delta Pinelands
Dr Bond: Delta Pinelands, the Queen of England.
Other research provided the economic and political
status of a state's Black population.
SNCC organizers would spend their first weeks
in a new community meeting with local leadership,
formulating with them an action plan for more aggressive
registration efforts.
Recruiting new activists through informal conversation.
Through pain-staking house-to-house canvassing
and regular mass meetings.
And, the organization's broader definitions
of the Civil Rights Movement purposes
was obvious from its very beginnings here on this campus.
Here, in April 1960, Charles Jones declared,
"This movement will affect other areas beyond
lunch counter services such as politics and economics."
A report from the conference concluded with a warning
about America's false preoccupation in early 1960s.
It said civil defense and economic power alone will not
ensure the continuation of our democracy.
Democracy itself demands the great intangible strength of
the people, able to unite in a common endeavor
because they are granted human dignity.
Within four months of these declarations,
SNCC volunteer, Robert Moses, was planning a student-staff
voter registration project in all-Black, Mound Bayou in the
Mississippi delta for the summer of 1961.
The work actually began in Southwestern Mississippi.
But, when its workers were driven from the area
by violence, by state suppression
and by federal indifference, the organization regrouped
in Jackson and the delta counties in early 1962.
Earlier in '61, SNCC's Nashville affiliate
had continued the freedom rise.
When Alabama violence threatened to bring them to an end.
After they were released from Parchman Penintentiary,
many of the jailed rioters joined the McComb Movement.
Several became part of the organizing cadres for the
Mississippi Movement which quickly followed.
Unencumbered by allegiances
to the National Democratic Party,
which frequently constrained older other organizations.
SNCC encouraged two black candidates to run for Congress.
Robert Moses served as the official campaign manager.
And, then to demonstrate that disenfranchised
Mississippi blacks really did want to vote,
SNCC mounted a freedom vote campaign in November '63.
Over 80,000 cast votes in a mock election
for a Governor and Lieutenant Governor.
A hundred northern white students worked in the campaign,
attracting attention from the Department of Justice
and the national media as black registration workers
had never done, paving the way
for the Freedom Summer of 1964.
Freedom Somber bought nearly a thousand, mostly white,
volunteers to Mississippi.
They helped build the new political party,
the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
They registered voters and they staffed 28 freedom schools
intended by their designer, Charles Cobb,
to provide an education which will make it possible for them
to challenge the myths of our society, to perceive more
clearly its realities, and to find alternatives and
ultimately new direction for action.
Over the next several years, candidates back by SNCC,
ran for Congress in Albany, Georgia, in Selma, Alabama,
in Danville, Virginia, and in Enfield, North Carolina.
SNCC helped candidates for FSCS boards
in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina
and Mississippi.
SNCC aided school board candidates in Arkansas in 1965;
worked towards solving the economic problems
of the Mississippi negro; by organizing the Mississippi
Freedom Labor Union and the Poor People's Coorporation.
But, among other contributions to electro politics,
with the formation of two political parties
and the conception and implementation of my successful
campaign for the Georgia State Legislator.
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
challenges the seating of the regular all-white delegation
from Mississippi at the '64 Convention.
And, in 1965 Mrs Gray and others challenged the seating of
Mississippi's Congressional Delegation in Washington.
The Convention challenge ended when pressures
from President Lyndon Johnson erased promised support from
party liberals, an offer was made and then rejected
of two convention seats to be filled,
not by the Freedom Democrats, but by the National Party.
We remember Mrs Fannie Lou Hamer's declaration,
"We didn't come for no two seats coz all of us is tired."
(audience laughing) (audience applause)
Both of these challenges served as an object lesson
for strengthening black political independence.
And, the organizing and lobbying efforts for each
laid the ground work for the Congressional passage
of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Then in 1965, the McComb branch of the MFDP
became the first black political organization
to express opposition to the war in Vietnam.
State MFDP officials not only refused to repudiate
the statement, they reprinted it in the State newsletter
giving it wider circulation and laying the groundwork
for future black opponents of the war in Vietnam.
The MFDPs efforts against white resistance
to political equality proved important to black
political efforts throughout the south.
An MFDP-directed court suit resulted in the Supreme Court's
landmark 1969 decision,
Allen versus the State Board of Elections,
for the very first time the Supreme Court recognized
and applied the principle of minority vote dilution,
that the black vote can be affected as much by dilution
as by an absolute prohibition on casting a ballot.
The middle 1960s became a turning point in the
southern human rights struggle.
Federal legislation passed in '64 and '65
accomplished the goals of many in the Civil Rights Movement.
Cleveland Sellars wrote,
"When the federal government passed bills
that supposedly supported black voting and outlawed
public segregation, SNCC lost the initiative in these areas.
Northern urban riots in the late 1960s made the nation
and southern civil rights workers aware that
victories at lunch counters and ballot boxes
meant little to black people locked into northern ghettos.
SNCC had long believed that it work oughta be expanded
to larger cities of the south and outside the region.
Executive committee minutes from December '63 quote
Forman asserting,
"SNCC is going to have to go into the poorer sections
of large cities to work."
My campaign for the Georgia House of Representatives in '65
was, in part, an attempt to take the technique
SNCC had learned in the rural south into an urban setting,
and to carry forward SNCC's belief that grassroots politics
could provide answers to problems faced by America's
urban blacks.
In keeping with SNCC's style, a platform was developed
in consultation with the voters.
The campaign supported a $2 minimum wage,
repeal of the Right to Work law,
abolition of the death penalty.
With the legislator twice rejected me,
objecting to my support of SNCC's anti-war position.
The resulting two campaigns gave SNCC a chance to
successfully test its critique of American Imperialism
at the ballot box.
That campaign, like the MFDP, enabled SNCC to provide a
political voice for the politically impudent
and inarticulate black poor.
In 1966 in Alabama,
SNCC helped create a black political party
called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.
An independent political party which would prove
to be a factor in Alabama politics for years to come.
It was formed in reaction to the racism of the local
and state Democratic Party.
Like the MFDP, the so-called Black Panther party,
was open to whites but no whites in Lowndes County
would participate in a black-dominated political effort.
Concurrently with these organizing efforts,
SNCC was reassessing its concentration on the south.
At a retreat in May of '66, Ivanhoe Donaldson
argued in favor -
it's not so odd to think about Ivanhoe and arguing
in the same sentence -
(audience laughing)
Ivanhoe Donaldson argued in favor of SNCC's replicating
it's successful southern political organizing efforts
in the north, and the staff agreed.
Donaldson and Robert Moses suggested
that techniques learned in southern campaigns
could be employed to ease SNCC's passage
into northern cities.
"Organizing for political power and community control
could mobilize northern urban dwellers", they contended.
And, Michael Thelwell proposed in 1966
that the organization should move
"to the ghetto and organize those communities
to control themselves. The organization must be attempted
in northern and southern areas,
as well as in the rural black-belt of the south."
So, projects were established in Washington D.C.
to fight for home rule in Columbus, Ohio,
where a community foundation was organized,
in New York City's Harlem where SNCC workers organized
early efforts at community control of public schools,
in Los Angeles where SNCC helped manage the local police
and joined an effort at creating a freedom city
in black neighborhoods,
and in Chicago where SNCC workers
began to build an independent
political party and demonstrated against
segregated schools.
In each of these cities, the southern experience
of the SNCC organizers helped to inform their
northern and western work.
As Chair, Marion Barry had written to members of
the Congress in 1960 to urge immediate action
to provide self-government for the voteless residents
of our nations capital, the District of Columbia.
Were you thinking about it then?
(audience laughing)
Dr Bond: In February 1966, Barry, then Director of
SNCC's Washington office, announced the formation of the
Free DC Movement.
He wrote then, "The premise is
that we wanna organize black people for black power."
He and the Free DC Movement conducted a successful
boycott of Washington Merchants,
who did not support home rule.
In New York, SNCC worker William Hall, helped a Harlem group
working for community control of Intermediate School 201
in the fall of 1966.
His work laid the groundwork for later successful protests
for community control of schools throughout the city.
In Los Angeles, SNCC worker Clifford Vaughs
described his work as, "a manifestation of self-help,
self-determination, and power for poor people."
So, as the focus of the southern movement had change,
so would the aim of the northern organizer.
Desegregation hd proven both illusive and insufficient
to the problems of American blacks, north or south.
Their ability to control their own communities
and to direct the community's elected officials
had become paramount, both in rural Mississippi
and in urban New York.
Just as concern for social change had never been limited
to the southern states alone,
SNCC's concern for human rights had long extended beyond
the borders of the United States.
From its first public statement, it had linked the
fight, plight of American blacks with the struggle
for African independence.
At its founding conference here at Raleigh,
it first announced its identification with
the African Liberation struggle.
We identify ourselves with the African struggle
as a concern for all mankind.
And, at SNCC's Fall 1960 conference in Atlanta,
a featured speaker was the brother
of Kenya Labor Leader, Tom Mboya.
SNCC Chairman, John Lewis, told the march on
Washington in 1963, "One man, one vote is the African cry.
It must be ours."
And, in December '63, SNCC workers in Atlanta conferred
with Kenya leader, Oginga Odinga.
And, in September 1964, an 11-member SNCC delegation
went to Guinea as guests of that country's President,
Sekou Toure.
Two members of the group toured Africa for a month
following the Guinea trip.
In October, two SNCC workers represented SNCC at the
Annual Meeting of the Organization of African Unity
in Ghana.
SNCC's January 1966 anti-war statement
claimed the United States was "deceptive in claiming
concern for the freedom of colored people
in other countries, such as the Congo, South Africa,
and the United States itself."
Singer, Harry Bellafonte, organized a supportive reception
at the UN with 15 applicant diplomats for SNCC personnel.
And, on March 22 1966, seven SNCC workers were arrested
at the South African Consulate in New York,
preceding by 20 years, the Free South Africa Movement
that later saw hundreds arrested at the South African
Embassy in Washington DC.
At a June '67 staff meeting, SNCC declared itself
a human rights organization dedicated to the liberation,
not only of black people in the United States,
but of all oppressed people, especially those of
Africa, Asia and Latin America.
SNCC Chair, Stokeley Carmichael, visited Algeria, Syria,
Egypt, Guinea, and Tanzania in mid '67.
In November '67, Forman testified for SNCC
before the United Nations Fourth Committee
against American investments in South Africa.
For many on the staff at the close of the decade
of the 1960s, nearly a decades worth of of hard work
at a regular subsistence level pay,
under an atmosphere of constant tension,
interrupted by jailings, beatings, official and private
terror, proved too much.
When measured by the legislate of accomplishments
of the '64 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
SNCC's efforts were successful.
But, the failure of the MFDP to gain recognition
in Atlantic City, predicted the coming collapse of
support from liberals.
The murders of four schoolgirls in Birmingham
and Medgar Evers in Jackson in '63,
of civil rights workers and others in Mississippi in '64,
of Martin Luther King and others in 1968,
argued that nonviolence was no antidote
in a violent society.
The outbreak of urban violence at the decade's end
further produced a sense of frustration
and alienation in many SNCC veterans.
Throughout it's brief history, NSCC insisted on
group-centered leadership and community-based politics.
It made clear the connection between economic power
and racial oppression.
It refused to define racism as solely southern.
To describe racial inequality as caused by
irrational prejudice alone,
or to limit it's struggle solely to guaranteeing
legal equality.
It challenged American imperialism while mainstream
civil rights organizations were quiet
or carried favor with President Lyndon Johnson.
They condemned SNCC's linkage of domestic poverty
and racism with overseas adventurism.
SNCC refused to apply political test
to its membership or its supporters,
opposing the red baiting which other organizations
and leaders endorsed and condoned.
It created an atmosphere of expectation and anticipation
among the people with whom it worked,
trusting them to make decision about their lives.
SNCC widened the definition of politics beyond
campaigns and elections.
For SNCC, politics encompassed not only electoral races
but also organizing political parties,
organizing labor unions, producing cooperatives
and alternative schools.
It initially thought to liberalize southern politics
by organizing and franchising southern blacks.
One proof of its success is the increase in black
elected officials in the southern states from 72
in 1965 to 388 in 1968.
But, SNCC also sought to liberalize the ends
of political participation
by enlarging the issues of political debate
to include the economic and foreign policy concerns
of American blacks.
SNCC's articulation and advocacy of black power
redefined the relationship between black Americans
and white power.
No longer would political equity be considered a privilege,
it had become a right.
Part of SNCC's legacy is the destruction
of the psychological shackles
which had kept black southerners in physical
and middle peonage.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
helped to break those chains forever.
But, SNCC also demonstrated that a band of brothers
and sisters, young and unskilled,
could create social change.
And, they demonstrated for all time
something that is generally an objectionable features
of these kind of associations,
and that's when the old, grey-haired, stoop-shouldered,
generation, that's me, passes a symbolic torch
to these young bright-eyed children; that's them.
This happened at the 30th anniversary of the march
on Washington where there were more people on the podium
than there were in the audience.
(audience laughing)
Dr Bond: And, I was nauseated by it
because I thought back to the early days
when you were with the NAACP in Memphis.
When the rest of us were struggling,
nobody handed us a torch.
We had to reach out and grab that torch
and peel those fingers, one by one.
The people who had the torch
didn't wanna let it go.
If we hadn't taken it they'd be holding it now.
Now, I'm saying to these young people,
if you want these torches, you got to come get 'em.
This is not a relay race. We're not handing you any torches.
Thank you all, very much.
(audience applause)
Walter: I believe Martha Norman has a few announcements
to make. Where is Martha?
Martha Norman has a few announcements to make.
Okay.
Well, let me thank you Julian Bond.
I sat through his lectures at Harvard and they're all
just that inspiring.
He had the class in the palm of his hand the whole time.
Yes, okay.
Mr Bond.
Dr Bond: Is there a record of the conference?
(audience laughing)
Dr Bond: I'm sure it'll be and it's been video-taped.
There's other sessions here been video-taped
but I don't know what's going to come of the video tapes.
-: Don't throw away the tapes.
[Dr Bond] Yeah. No, I have it on disc.
(audience laughing)
-: Julian, have you made the award of recognition, yet?
Have you don the recognition, yet?
Oh, lets do that.
No, you first. Yes.
Is Bob Moses here?
We need Bob Moses and Diane Nash.