SNCC- The New Abolitionists

by Howard Zinn

  But the issue is not as clear-cut as that. Once out in the field, the student misses intense reading, intellectual discussions, the classroom exchange (perhaps the campus becomes romanticized when one is trying to find a comfortable position on an iron cot in Greenville, Mississippi). Knowing that the college is divorced from the reality of social struggle, and also that the struggle itself does not quite feed his intellectual appetites, each student solves his problem in his own way. He or she may totally withdraw from college, or regretfully return after a year or two in the field, or go through a painful mental tug-of-war, zigzagging back and forth from the movement to the campus, unable to decide.

  The few hundred students—white and Negro—who have rebelled against the social neutrality of the American college system by deserting it, either temporarily or permanently, represent, I believe, only the visible part of an iceberg of discontent which chills the millions of other students who remain in school. These others don’t express their dissatisfaction by joining the civil rights movement. Some of them simply bury their feelings in the folderol of fraternities or sororities; others find excuses for leaving school; others go through the ritual and graduate, but they couldn’t care less.

  Most of those troubled students don’t even know why they are dissatisfied. But it may very well be that, deep in the consciousness of a number of them, is the thought that higher education is divorced from the life-or-death problems of this century, that colleges play with social issues, examine them at a distance, talk endlessly about them, but never live with them.

  Among the five million white students in the nation, the effect of the civil rights drama has been complex: many react as they do to their classes, with a combination of boredom and annoyance, impatient to get out in the real world of credit cards, a comfortable income, and a shrewd marriage. For many others, the movement has had the faint scent of forbidden fruit, enticing, but distant and unknowable.

  But for a handful, the heavens suddenly lit up and the stars changed their positions; these few were catapulted, by the emotional force of the movement and the passion of their own response, out of the safe world of college education and into a new sphere of danger, commitment and promise. With each month, more and more white students become involved, either partially, on their campuses, or totally, hurling themselves into the most tense trouble areas of the Deep South.

  SNCC itself is making attempts to meet the dilemma of field work versus academic education. For one thing, it is beginning to turn its attention again—after several years of neglect—to the college campuses from which it sprang in 1960, to salt these campuses with its own veterans, to make of them permanent sources from which the civil rights movement can be freshened with new recruits.

  In a parallel move, SNCC is attempting one of the most exciting ventures in contemporary education. With financial help from foundations, and cooperation from a few Southern Negro colleges, it is trying to develop a series of work-study programs, in which a small group of college students will leave the campus for a year to work in the movement, combining this with lectures and discussions, constituting itself a kind of seminar-in-the-field.

  Also, the hundred and fifty or so SNCC staff members may soon be able to continue their studies by an internal educational program designed specifically for field people, combining short periods at educational centers with reading assignments the year round. All of this, hopefully, may begin to cause some turbulence in the ordered atmosphere of the academic world, and to set many of us to thinking, not only about society, but about the proper role of education in it.

  To move beyond race means to accept the fact that black men are as capable of inhumanity and power-seeking and injustice as are white men, that, in a rational division on the basis of the just and the unjust, Negroes and whites would fall on both sides of the line. People in SNCC discovered this quickly, because as soon as they began demonstrating, they ran into entrenched conservatism, first in a number of the Negro colleges, then in Negro communities. And in unhesitatingly battling the old Negro leadership, at the same time that they were rebelling against the white power-holders in the South, they pointed the way to a race-less society.

  The Negro college is a fascinating paradox. On the one hand, it has produced many of the new leaders of the civil rights crusade; on the other hand, it has done this unwittingly, and with varying degrees of resistance. The militant students coming out of the Negro colleges have had to vault over the century-long traditions of conservatism and obsequiousness which pervade many of these campuses.

  It would be wrong to generalize, for in a few of the Negro colleges the presidents are forward-looking and have supported the movement vigorously. But too many still match the unforgettable picture given in the opening chapters of Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. Staughton Lynd and Bobbi Yancy have described it, in the magazine Dissent, as follows:

  The setting and the cast will be found all over the South: the beautiful fragrant campus with its imposing buildings; the patronizing white trustee, anxious to feel sure that his money is well spent; the Negro college president, unctuous in chapel, overbearing to students, deferential to donors; finally the student, eager to succeed on the terms agreed to by parents, teachers, and the mass media, but obscurely aware that some larger possibility is being forfeited.

  The expulsion of students at Southern University, the intimidation of students and the dismissal of faculty at Spelman College, the faculty firings at Benedict and Allen Colleges, the repression at Alabama State—these brought the more active students into immediate conflict with Negro college presidents, and provided early instruction on the mythology of race. Saunders Redding, who had gone through the experience himself, spoke of “presidential contempt” for the students at Negro colleges, and how this led students to believe in “the infallibility of the dictatorship principle.” What has happened these last few years is that these students have raised a simultaneous rebellion against dictatorship in both races.

  As black and white students mingle in the movement and compare experiences they learn, somewhat to their surprise, that both white and Negro colleges suffer from the same disabilities: pallid middle-class ambitions connected with money and prestige, a condescendingly paternal attitude towards students by administrators and faculty standing on their piles of degrees, the hierarchy of authority which puts huge power in the hands of college administrators, the consequent restrictions on the academic freedom of both faculty and students. That these qualities are exaggerated in Southern Negro colleges (and in Southern white colleges) is due to the fact, easily overlooked, that they are products of a segregated society.

  As the rebelling students left college and began working with the Negro community, they found that once again they were engaged in a double battle, which carried them beyond the race question. Perhaps SNCC, being the youngest and most militant of the organizations, having come into conflict most often with the Negro Establishment itself, is therefore in a particularly good position to demolish the frauds and foibles of race-consciousness.

  That quality in SNCC which may be of the most profound importance to the rest of America is the one most difficult to define. For one thing, it is a renunciation, without the pretense of martyrdom, of the fraud and glitter of a distorted prosperity. It is also a recapturing from some time and place long forgotten of an emotional approach to life, aiming, beyond politics and economics, simply to remove the barriers that prevent human beings from making contact with one another.

  The most obvious contribution of SNCC has been to move boldly into the center of danger and, while taking blows, enduring pain and poverty, leaving family and friends behind, to force the nation to look at itself. Among civil rights organizations, it has remained unique in its youth, its willingness to immerse itself in the black communities of the Deep South, its distance from the circles of official power.

  Different from the old abolitionists in its predominantly Negro character, its greater reliance on action than words
, its working from within the source of the evil rather than berating it from the outside, SNCC retains the essence of what made for greatness in Garrison, Phillips, and their contemporaries. This is the recognition that agitation, however it offends one’s friends and creates temporary strife, is indispensable to social progress as a way of breaking through an otherwise frozen status quo.

  Perhaps SNCC’s most important achievement has been its role as a stimulant to Negroes—young and old—in the Black Belt, who have been encouraged to break through the long years of surface quiescence and create a new local leadership in dozens of communities of the Deep South. Thus, not only are expectations created which, once awakened, will not die, but the basis for fulfilling these expectations is taking root.

  It might be useful now to ask some questions about the future of SNCC:

  One of them is whether SNCC can, without losing its spontaneity, its fervor, its unconcern with respectability, develop more sophisticated tactics as situations change. True, even unplanned demonstrations with muddied objectives have a healthy effect in simply bringing the indignation of the aggrieved to the attention of the comfortable. But also, by pouring out huge sacrifices for small victories, they can drain the Negro community. Demonstrative activities in the future should be more carefully worked out, coordinated with legal moves and with negotiations, in order to get the most from them. Wit and muscle need to be joined so as to make the maximum of progress with the minimum of pain. Pressure may be needed to break impasses, but SNCC’s commitment to winning over people remains valid as that ultimate goal, without which progress cannot be fastened into permanence.

  It will be interesting to see how successful SNCC will be in adjusting its tactics to correspond to the different situations and stages in the civil rights struggle. There is first the absolutely silent Negro community which needs to be awakened; here, the SNCC youngsters have done marvelous work. With the awakening, there begins a series of pushes against the closed door, by demonstrative activity of all kinds, bringing economic, political, and moral pressure against the old order to break down both legal and extra-legal segregation. This has been done with much success in some states: in Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, Louisville, etc. In other areas this hasn’t worked, because the door is not simply closed—it is locked, and the movement has battered itself bloody trying to budge it. This has been SNCC’s experience in Mississippi, Alabama, and Southwest Georgia; it led SNCC, hoping to limit the sacrifice, to ask that the key of federal power be used to open the locked door. So far, the federal government has been reluctant not only to use the key, but also to admit that it possesses one.

  What SNCC has not yet had to face on a large scale is what happens when the door, whether locked by the police statism of the Deep South, or closed by the segregationists of the Upper South, is finally opened. Then, as CORE and other groups have found in the cities of the north, one moves finally into the previously barred room only to find that most of the furniture is occupied and the only place to sit is on the floor. And SNCC will soon encounter this, because more and more Atlanta and Nashville will become like New York and Chicago (as will Jackson, Mississippi, one day). And at that point its radicalism, which easily expiates itself as heroism in the battle-spots of the Deep South, will face profound questions of social strategy: how to deal with problems like unemployment, job discrimination, bad housing, poor schools, which can be ameliorated but not solved by picket lines.

  So long as there exist poverty, unemployment, slums, and inadequate schools in the United States, the Negroes will have a disproportionate share of them, and even a proportionate share of them is intolerable in a nation with such splendid economic potential. Civil rights groups, then, may begin to argue for a planned American economy. Such a reorganization of national wealth should be on the basis of justice rather than either luck or “ability”—which in our culture is too often defined as the ability to make money.

  Among the more exciting possibilities in the development of SNCC these next few years is the creation of a new populism in the South, linking black and white people on the basis of common interests. At this point, it is little more than a dream. But what has taken place in the past year is that the original handful of white Southern students in SNCC—Jane Stembridge, Bob Zellner, Sam Shirah, Sandra Hayden—shows signs of a spectacular increase. Hundreds of white Southern-born students at Southern colleges have begun to take part in the civil rights movement, from attending meetings to walking on picket lines. At a SNCC Executive Committee meeting in Atlanta in early 1964, twenty-five Southern white students suddenly appeared, already organized, ready to go back to their colleges and universities throughout the South. They expect to build upon the growing belief among young white Southerners in racial equality, as well as to constitute themselves a radical spearhead on other social issues.

  If this nucleus can do as SNCC did, first gather support in the colleges, and then move into the white communities, this will be the boldest move yet to attack the race problem in the South. Perhaps more important than anything else will be the example of white and Negro students working together, creating those situations of intimate contact which choke out prejudice.

  Among other speculations about the future of SNCC is whether it will fulfill a promise it now contains in blurred form: to recognize that there are other supreme human values, along with that of racial equality, which deserve attention. For any society, whether totally white, or totally black, or perfectly mixed, can be controlled by an elite of power, can ignore the most wretched poverty, can destroy the right of protest, can engage in the mass murder of war.

  Perhaps such a promise is not for SNCC alone to make good but for all of us, since the entire nation, shaken by the civil rights movement, has been granted a moment of grace in which to reflect on its past and its future. The history of our country—and indeed of all countries—seems to be a kind of stumbling through the darkness, continually banging into the furniture of the universe, and able to tell where we have been only by counting our bruises. In times of social disorder, however, there are moments of illumination when it becomes possible to see not only the problem at hand, but beyond it. Almost always, no one is ready; the flash comes, we blink and gasp, and then the darkness closes in again after we have been able to see our way for one step further, but no more.

  Now, in the 1960’s, in the United States, the terrain is lit up for a brief historic moment by the storm of the Negro revolt. We can, as in reform movements of the past, take one step forward, and then wait for the next flash of upheaval. Or we can take this opportunity to look hard, not only deep inside the race question, but beyond it, to other issues of justice and freedom.

  12. An Independent Radicalism

  In early June, 1964, twenty-five black Mississippians climbed into a bus and travelled a thousand miles to Washington, D.C. Their purpose was to warn the Federal government of impending danger; to ask for protection for themselves and the seven hundred Northern college students who were going to spend the summer in Mississippi.

  The President was out of town, delivering a Commencement Address, and the Attorney General was unavailable. From the stage of the National Theatre, a short walk from the White House, the delegation from Mississippi addressed themselves to several hundred citizens sitting in the audience, to a “jury” of distinguished writers and educators, and to the television cameras. What they told that day, in dozens of variations, was a story of police brutality and intimidation, of complaints to the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, and of no help.

  Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer told of her beating in Winona and Mrs. Louis Allen of the shotgun murder of her husband outside her home. A fourteen-year-old boy told of being kicked and slapped by police, and of how he first “got started.” “One day I was just standing on the street, watching a demonstration. The police came. They said, ‘All you niggers move.’ One hit me in the stomach with a club. I said ‘OOMP!’ And I joined the movement.”

  Jimmy Travis
of SNCC told how he was shot, almost fatally, just outside of Greenwood. Asked for suggestions on what might be done to help, he replied: “We need federal marshals to be sent down this summer.”

  A parade of constitutional lawyers came to the stand and testified about the powers of the Federal government to protect citizens against attack on their constitutional rights. Professor Robert J. Harris of the University of Michigan Law School quoted at length from an 1880 decision, Ex parte Siebold, in which the Supreme Court affirmed that the national government could execute its laws “on every foot of American soil.” How many marshals should be sent to Mississippi for the summer, he was asked? “I don’t think you could have too many.”

  William Higgs, Mississippi’s lawyer-in-exile, tall, blond, soft-speaking, hard-hitting, came to the microphone. He pointed to the different treatment by federal authorities of a bank robber and a brutal policeman, though both were violating federal law, and noted the F.B.I.’s power, by statute, to make arrests. He was asked if he was not contradicting the Attorney General of the United States, who had said the F.B.I. was just an investigative agency. Higgs replied: I am.

  The transcript of the day’s testimony was sent to President Johnson and to Attorney General Kennedy. There was no response.

  On June 21, 1964, exactly thirteen days after that plea to the President in Washington, James Chaney, an eighteen-year-old Negro from Meridian, Michael Schwerner, a twenty-five-year-old white CORE organizer in Meridian, and Andrew Goodman, twenty, a summer volunteer just arrived from the Oxford, Ohio, orientation session, disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi, after their arrest on a traffic charge by local police. The F.B.I. and the Justice Department responded with their usual slowness to civil rights workers’ requests for help. This time, the delay turned out to be fatal. The F.B.I., notified at 10 P.M. that night about the disappearance of the three, did not show up in Philadelphia until almost twenty-four hours later.