Summary: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
2193 Words9 Pages
Ashley Sanchez, Roberto Martinez, Oswaldo Portillo, Laura Ramos
US. History/ 8th pd
March 5, 2015
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Before
February 1, 1960, the Greensboro sit-in. Four African American students who attended the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University walked in the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina and sat down at the lunch counter. After leaving the counter to shop they returned to the same counter and were denied service. The store’s policy clearly stated that they served “whites only” and the four students were asked to leave. The students, later known as the Greensboro Four, refused to do as told and stayed until closing. Their actions influenced a wave of sit-ins across…show more content… Throughout the whole campaign to stop racial segregation sit-ins took place in stores at Nashville’s central business district. African American college students were the main participants in the sit-ins and were violently attacked whether it had been verbally or physically. About 150 people were arrested for staying at the lunch counters even after they were asked to leave.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came about from a student meeting held at Shaw University by Ella Baker on April 1960. It was majorly influenced by the Greensboro and Nashville sit-ins, and it was one of the most important organizations during the American Civil Rights Movement. The SNCC played a role freedom rides, organizing voter registration drives all over the South, supported feminism, and had a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington. They also focused on black power and protesting the Vietnam War. The SNCC was independent of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was run by Martin Luther King Jr. The SCLC had wanted the SNCC to be part of their organization in order to better communicate since they were working towards a common goal, but the SNCC refused to become integrated with the SCLC. They coordinated their own projects and worked towards the end of segregation and the granting of civil rights in their own…show more content… They sympathized with the Vietnamese people, both were groups of poor, non-white people that were being oppressed by the U.S. government. Despite this, the SNCC didn’t have an official stance on the war, until the murder of Sammy Younge. He was a member of the SNCC who was killed in vietnam when he tried to use the white restroom. His assassin was a white gas station attendant. The murder of Younge ignited the anti-vietnam movement within the SNCC. The SNCC wanted the government to listen to their outcry, both for stopping the war in Vietnam and for stopping the archaic ideal of white superiority that still ruled much of the