Passing the Torch: SNCC

Left to Right; William Porter, Ralph Featherstone, Ella Baker, and Cynthia Washington at a SNCC meeting in Waveland, MS in November 1964.

Civil Rights Movement Archive Inc.

On February 1, 1960, students from AT&T University in Greensboro, NC, refused to give up their seats at a Woolworth’s lunch counter when they were denied service. With the rise of sit-ins protesting the segregated lunch counters and other businesses that deny equal access to the Black community, Ella aims to unite these disjointed nonviolent efforts into a more cohesive protest. In the Spring of 1960, Ella organized a conference for student activists to congregate at her alma mater, Shaw University. The Southwide Student Leadership Conference on Nonviolent Resistance to Segregation was held on April 16–18, with over 200 student leaders in attendance. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born from this meeting.

For Baker, she gravitated towards the younger members of the Movement because they had nothing to lose and fearlessly yearned for social change. Ella hoped that the radical youth of SNCC not be shackled by the bureaucracy of existing organizations.

Mistrust in MLK and other leaders from SLCL made Ella fear that the ambitious students’ effort would be stifled. Instead, Baker used her twenty years of experience in the Civil Rights Movement to protect the students’ autonomy and gave her mentees the needed guidance and resources to pursue their nonviolent passions.

Click on the pamphlet to read the “Report of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee," from May 13th, 1960.

Civil Rights Movement Archive Inc.

"Throughout the decade of the sixties, many people helped to ignite or were touched by the creative fire of sncc without appreciating the generating force of Ella Jo Baker"

James Forman, 1972

On the Front Lines: Sit-ins and Freedom Rides

By using the nonviolence tactic, sit-in organizers wanted to highlight who is causing violence to ensue in America in hopes it will allow the world to see the seriousness and urgency of their cause. Their instructions were to sit down and wait to be served.

While speaking at the 1960 Shaw University conference, Ella urged the budding activists to think of the Movement as “bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized Coke.” The protests and the Civil Rights Movement were more than desegregating lunch counters but required full-time dedication.

Ambushed Freedom Riders Bus in Alabama

Civil Rights Movement Archive Inc.

1962 Map tracking the route of the Freedom Rides, Associated Press

Supreme Court decision in the case of Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960) to end desegregation in bus terminal facilities and the buses prompted a new set of Freedom Rides and SNCC's involvement modeled after the 1947 CORE rides. In 1961 a group of seven black and six white people, including John Lewis, left Washington, D.C. for New Orleans on two buses. After multiple successful stops, the Freedom Riders faced trouble at the Rock Hill, SC Greyhound bus station when an angry mob attacked the group.

To prove that violence will not get in the way of SNCC, the organizations partnered with the Nashville Student Movement to host another Freedom ride. This time from Birmingham, AL, to New Orleans, LA. The group of eight African-Americans and two whites was arrested in Birmingham and were driven out of town to the Tennessee border by the racist Police Chief Eugene "Bull" O'Connor.