[It’s not enough for students to simply learn about the sit-ins
or Freedom Rides. SNCC’s organizing campaigns need to be at the
center of civil rights curriculum.]
[[link removed]]

TEACHING SNCC: THE ORGANIZATION AT THE HEART OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
REVOLUTION  
[[link removed]]


 

Adam Sanchez
September 1, 2023
Rethinking Schools
[[link removed]]

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_ It’s not enough for students to simply learn about the sit-ins or
Freedom Rides. SNCC’s organizing campaigns need to be at the center
of civil rights curriculum. _

,

 

“That’s the problem with Black Lives Matter! We need a strong
leader like Martin Luther King!” Tyriq shouted as I wrote King’s
name on the board.

I started my unit on the Civil Rights Movement by asking my high
school students to list every person or organization they knew was
involved. They replied with several familiar names: Martin Luther King
Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Emmett Till. Occasionally a student knew
an organization: the NAACP or the Black Panther Party.

“Has anyone ever heard of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee?” I asked while writing the acronym on the board.

“S-N-C-C?” students sounded out as my black expo marker moved
across the whiteboard.

“Have you ever heard of the sit-ins?” I prodded.

“Yeah, weren’t they in Alabama?” Matt answered.

“No, Mississippi! Four students sat down at a lunch counter,
right?” Kadiatou proudly declared.

This is usually the extent of my students’ prior knowledge of SNCC
[[link removed]], one of the
organizations most responsible for pushing the Civil Rights Movement
forward. Without the history of SNCC at their disposal, students think
of the Civil Rights Movement as one that was dominated by charismatic
leaders and not one that involved thousands of young people like
themselves. Learning the history of how young students risked their
lives to build a multigenerational movement against racism and for
political and economic power allows students to draw new conclusions
about the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement and how to apply them
to today.

YOU ARE MEMBERS OF SNCC

Pedagogically based on Rethinking Schools editor Bill Bigelow’s
abolitionist role play
[[link removed]],
and drawing content from the voices of SNCC veterans and the
scholarship of Howard Zinn, Clayborne Carson, and other historians, I
created a series of role plays where students imagined themselves as
SNCC members. In their roles, students debated key questions the
organization faced while battling Jim Crow. My hope was that by
role-playing the moments in SNCC’s history where activists made
important decisions, students would gain a deeper understanding of how
the movement evolved, what difficulties it faced, and most
importantly, an understanding that social movements involve ordinary
people taking action, but also discussing and debating a way forward.

I taught the role play in my U.S. history class at Madison High School
in Portland, Oregon, and more recently in a course about the Civil
Rights Movement at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City.
Both schools serve a diverse mix of Black, Latina/o, Asian, and white
students — unusual examples of diversity for both public school
districts. They also house a large population of students who come
from low-income families.

To introduce the role play, I created a handout that situates students
in the role of an SNCC member through providing background on what led
up to the formation of SNCC. Before reading the handout out loud as a
class, I told students they would be writing from the role of an SNCC
member and should highlight any information — particularly about
historical events — they might want to include. The role begins with
historical background:

In _Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka_, _Boynton v. Virginia_,
and several other court cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled Jim
Crow segregation unconstitutional. But from movie theaters to swimming
pools, parks to restaurants, buses to schools, almost every aspect of
public life in the South remains segregated.

In 1955, 50,000 African Americans in Montgomery (Alabama’s
second-largest city) participated in a boycott to end segregation of
the city buses. . . . But after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the
movement struggled to move forward. Segregationists launched a massive
campaign of terror that prevented further gains. . . . While the
protests of the 1950s gave you a sense of pride and power, it
increasingly became clear that larger, more dramatic actions would be
necessary to break the back of Jim Crow. You were prepared to act and
you were not alone.

The handout continues by discussing the initial sit-ins that spread
quickly across the South and led to the formation of SNCC. After
reading about the sit-ins and SNCC’s founding conference in April of
1960, we quickly moved on to another crucial event that shaped
SNCC’s early history: the Freedom Rides.

FREEDOM RIDER LETTER

To introduce the Freedom Rides, I edited together two clips from
the PBS documentary Freedom Riders
[[link removed]]. The
first part introduces students to the concept of the Freedom Rides, a
series of bus trips organized by the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) though the South to protest segregation in interstate travel
facilities. The clip also takes students through the burning of one
Greyhound bus in Anniston, Alabama, and the attack on the Freedom
Riders in a second bus by a white mob in Birmingham.

The second part reveals that after the violence in Birmingham, the
first round of Freedom Riders decided to fly to New Orleans and head
home. It then turns to the Nashville students in SNCC who decided they
couldn’t let the Freedom Rides end in failure. As SNCC leader Diane
Nash [[link removed]] explains in
the video:

If we allowed the Freedom Ride to stop at that point, just after so
much violence had been inflicted, the message would have been sent
that all you have to do to stop a nonviolent campaign is inflict
massive violence. It was critical that the Freedom Ride not stop, and
that it be continued immediately.

After the clip, I tell students that to get in the role of an SNCC
member, they will be writing letters to their parents as if they were
planning to join the Freedom Rides. Together we read a short
assignment that reiterates some of the basic facts about the Freedom
Rides and gives them more information about what to write: “Describe
for your parents the experiences that led you to risk your life in
order to end segregation in the South. You can choose your gender,
your race, your age, your social class, and the region where you grew
up. Give yourself a name and a history. Be imaginative. In vivid
detail, tell the story of the events that made you who you are now: a
Freedom Rider.” While in reality, many Freedom Riders chose not to
tell their parents, this activity allows students to think through
what makes someone willing to take great risks for a just cause.

Whether giving this assignment as homework or giving students in-class
time to work on it, I often get back incredible letters. Marquandre
wrote passionately about why he felt the need to join:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I have made the decision to join the Freedom Riders. I know it’s a
big risk, but I feel I need to do this. I’m sure you’ve heard
about the bus that was burned in Anniston and the attack on the
Freedom Riders in Birmingham. We can’t let this violence be the end.
We need to show them that their violence can’t stop our fight.

Now I know you’ll be angry with me for dropping out of school to
join the Freedom Rides. I really appreciate all you have done for me,
and how hard you worked to get me to college. But seeing you work so
hard for so little is why I’m doing this. I remember how you worked
10 or 12 hours a day just to pay the bills and put food on the table
for me and my sisters.

I know you wanted a better future for me. But I’ve heard that nearly
all of last year’s graduates fell short of their dreams to be
doctors, lawyers, journalists, and so on. They say “knowledge is
power,” but what’s the point of an education when I’m still
going to end up in a low-wage job because I’m Black? I want Lily and
Diana to know that their brother fought for their future. I want my
children to grow up in a country where segregation doesn’t exist. .
. . If not now, when? This is our time.

After students finished working, I had them read their letters to each
other in pairs or small groups. Sometimes I asked the class to form a
circle and read each letter aloud one by one. I was never disappointed
when I took the time to do this. It helps students gain a deeper
connection to their roles and creates a rich aural portrait of a
social movement.

ORGANIZING MISSISSIPPI

When students finished sharing their letters, we watched the
movie Freedom Song
[[link removed]]. _Freedom
Song_ is an indispensable film that gives a gripping narrative based
on SNCC’s first voter registration project in McComb, Mississippi
[[link removed]].
I’ve found that the film helps give students a deep visual
understanding of SNCC’s organizing efforts that grounds the role
play that follows. While watching _Freedom Song_, I asked students to
pay attention to what leadership looks like in SNCC and how SNCC makes
decisions. I also point out that in the last scenes of the film, some
of the students from the local community where SNCC was organizing
join SNCC and move to organize other parts of the state, while others
stay behind and maintain the voter registration classes that SNCC
began. In other words, as the best organizers do, SNCC organized
themselves out of a job — they built a local movement that not only
could sustain itself once they left, but could also help spread the
movement to other parts of the state.

Next I distributed a handout containing three key questions that SNCC
debated during their fight for racial justice in Mississippi:

1. Should SNCC focus its efforts on voter registration or direct
action?

2. Should SNCC bring a thousand mostly white volunteers to
Mississippi? If so, should SNCC limit the role of white volunteers?

3. Should SNCC workers carry guns? If not, should SNCC allow or seek
out local people to defend its organizers with guns?

Each question is accompanied with some historical context that helps
students understand why this has become a debated question within
SNCC, as well as short arguments for both sides. Here’s an example
from the handout:

SITUATION: While SNCC has always been a Black-led, majority-Black
organization, there has always been a small number of white SNCC
members. But Northern white students have been increasingly getting
involved. At SNCC’s 1963 conference, one-third of the participants
were white. Some staff members are now proposing to bring 1,000 mostly
white students from all around the United States to Mississippi in the
summer of 1964 to help with voter registration efforts. This plan has
sparked discussion in SNCC on the role of whites in the movement.

QUESTION: Should SNCC bring 1,000 mostly white volunteers to
Mississippi? If so, should SNCC limit the role of white volunteers?

ARGUMENTS: Some Black SNCC members are concerned that instead of
Black volunteers helping to build local leadership to organize their
own communities, whites tend to take over leadership roles in the
movement, preventing Southern Blacks from getting the support they
need to lead. Many Northern whites enter SNCC with skills and an
education that allow them to dominate discussions. If SNCC does decide
to bring down white volunteers, these organizers insist that white
activists should focus on organizing the Southern white community.
After all, isn’t it the racism in white communities that is the
biggest barrier to Black progress? Other SNCC members argue that too
many local activists have been murdered for trying to organize and
vote and the majority of the nation will only care when their white
sons and daughters are in harm’s way. Bringing student volunteers
from all around the country will mean increased attention on
Mississippi’s racist practices from the family and friends of the
volunteers, as well as the media. This spotlight might force the
federal government to protect civil rights workers and Blacks in
Mississippi trying to register to vote. In addition, some local
organizers argue that if we’re trying to break down the barrier of
segregation, we can’t segregate ourselves. Moreover, Black people
are a minority in the United States and can’t change things alone.

I gave students the handout the class period before the actual role
play and asked them to jot down initial answers to each question for
homework. This is especially helpful for students who don’t feel as
comfortable speaking in class discussion or who take longer to process
their thoughts.

I explained to students that we would run our meetings in the same
manner that SNCC ran meetings. We would choose a chair to call on
other students and try to reach informal consensus. I echoed what I
was told by SNCC veteran Judy Richardson
[[link removed]]: “Each one of us
is putting our lives on the line, so we want to try to make sure that
we come to a decision that we all feel comfortable with.” Once we
chose a facilitator (or one for each question), I concluded with
another insight I learned from Richardson: “Now the last thing you
need to know about how SNCC ran meetings is that if things got really
heated, someone would start singing and then others would just join in
to remind everyone what they meant to each other and all they’d been
through together. So, I’m going to teach you a song that they might
have sung, and if our discussion at any point gets really contentious,
we can sing to remind us that we are all in this together.” I sang
for students “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” and
encouraged them to sing with me the second and third round. This was a
little out of my comfort zone as a teacher, and singing in a social
studies class can be out of students’ comfort zone, but it became an
essential and beautiful part of the role play. In addition to when the
debate got heated, we sang the song to refocus after a lockdown drill,
and I even heard a few students singing it in the hallways after
class.

STUDENTS RUN THEIR OWN MEETING

To start the role play students sat in a circle. I encouraged them to
read the entire question out loud — including the situation and the
arguments — before jumping into each debate. This way, students who
weren’t present when I gave out the questions or who didn’t have a
chance to read them for homework could still participate in the
discussions. Students ran the debate, though occasionally I did jump
in to the discussion to play devil’s advocate, ensure they were
taking all sides seriously, or re-emphasize the historical context
that had provoked the question they were debating. When I did jump in,
I always did so as an equal — raising my hand and waiting to be
called on by the student facilitator. In general, I’ve been blown
away by the seriousness and passion students bring to these
discussions. Here’s a sample from our class debate on the first
question: Should SNCC focus its efforts on voter registration or
direct action?

DWELL: I think we should focus on voter registration because if we
had some sort of political power we could take out the racist
politicians.

JADE: I disagree. I think direct action is more useful. We’ve seen
that the _Brown v. Board_ decision didn’t actually desegregate
schools. It took direct action. Action moves things forward faster and
we want change now.

GIORGIO: I agree with Dwell, focusing on voter registration is going
to create a permanent change that will come from the government, not
just changes in a few small places.

RACHEL: But at the end of the day, it was the protests that pushed
the government to make new laws. And isn’t it suspicious that the
Kennedys are saying they will help us secure funds if we focus on
voter registration? Whose side are they on? Do they just want these
new voters to vote for them?

SHONA: I see voter registration as direct action. As we saw
in _Freedom Song_, SNCC members get beaten up whether they are doing
sit-ins or voter registration. Both are forms of nonviolent
disobedience. Why can’t we focus on both?

The time frame for the debates has varied depending on the pacing of
class discussions and how much wiggle room I had built into the unit,
but it has always taken at least one or two class periods. As we go, I
have students jot down the decisions the class made, whether they
agreed or disagreed with those decisions, and why.

When students finished debating the last question, I gave them a short
reading adapted from several sources that explains how these debates
played out in reality. Naturally, after debating the questions
themselves, students were eager to know “what really happened.”
Either for homework or as a debrief in class, I asked students to
compare the decisions we made in class with SNCC’s ultimate
decisions on those topics, write about what decision they found most
interesting or surprising, and think about how SNCC’s experience in
Mississippi changed the organization. While most students tended to
agree with the decisions SNCC made, debating these questions as a
class allowed them to look at the decisions more critically and not
see them as inevitable. Imari wrote: “While SNCC chose not to limit
the role of white volunteers I disagree with this decision. In class
we discussed how white college students would tend to dominate
discussions and reinforce Southern Blacks’ sense of inferiority.
While I agree with SNCC that they shouldn’t segregate Black and
white SNCC members, I think they could have placed some limits on
white volunteers.”

Adeola’s comments about how organizing in Mississippi transformed
SNCC were particularly insightful: “I think SNCC members felt like
they couldn’t be safe without being armed. They would get violently
attacked by whites for trying to get the most basic things like the
right to vote. They probably began to see nonviolence as more of a
tactic than a policy.”

After debriefing the role play, we watched part of an Eyes on the
Prize
[[link removed]] episode
that covers Freedom Summer [season 1, episode 5, _Mississippi: Is
This America?_], when more than 1,000 volunteers joined SNCC
organizers to dramatically increase voter registration in Mississippi.
We also learned how during the summer, activists form the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party
[[link removed]] to
challenge the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party at the Democratic
National Convention of 1964. The organizing involved in creating the
MFDP was tremendous, full of valuable lessons, and worth spending time
on in the classroom. I’ve often used Teaching for Change’s
phenomenal lesson “Sharecroppers Challenge U.S. Apartheid
[[link removed]]” to cover this
complicated effort with students.

CASE STUDIES IN ORGANIZING ALABAMA

After learning about Freedom Summer, we return to the role play.
Students are again seated in a circle and run their own meeting. This
time, however, I split the class into three circles — groups large
enough to still have a diverse group of vocal peers and small enough
that they could get through questions a bit quicker. Armed with
background about SNCC’s work in Mississippi, I wanted to move
student discussions away from SNCC’s internal and more philosophical
debates and toward more concrete problem-solving that happens during
an organizing campaign.

I chose two “case studies” that further draw out SNCC’s history
and unique contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. The first case
study looks at the famous 1965 voting rights campaign in Selma,
Alabama
[[link removed]],
from the perspective of SNCC. Several of my students had seen the
movie _Selma_, but even for them, looking at the campaign through the
eyes of SNCC was a new experience. I started with a short reading that
gave students background about SNCC’s long work in Selma and the new
campaign launched by Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. The reading explains the difference between the
two organizations’ organizing methods: “SNCC projects emphasize
the development of grassroots organizations headed by local people.
SNCC organizers work, eat, and sleep in a community — for years, if
necessary — and attempt to slowly develop a large local leadership
that can carry on the struggle eventually without SNCC field staff. .
. . The SCLC led local communities into nonviolent confrontations with
segregationists and the brutal cops and state police who backed up Jim
Crow laws. They hoped to bring national media attention to local
struggles and force the federal government to intervene to support
civil rights activists.”

I explained to students why I’ve put them in multiple circles, have
each circle pick their own facilitator, and hand out five
“problem-solving” questions SNCC faced during the Selma campaign.
In their circles, students debate and decide on answers to the five
questions. Some of the questions ask students to decide whether they
should support the efforts of the SCLC, while others are more
open-ended and require students to come up with creative solutions.
Here’s a short excerpt from one student discussion on whether SNCC
should support the 50-mile nonviolent march from Selma to Montgomery
that will go through some of the most violent areas of Alabama:

ARIS: No, no, no! First, it’s a 50-mile march! Then King’s going
to take them through these violent racist places. And he’s
nonviolent, so that means that if they want to snatch our people up,
we’re gonna have to let them!

NAKIYAH: But King brings a lot of publicity with him. You think they
are going to attack us while the cameras are on us?

ARIS: It’s a 50-mile march. The cameras can’t be on us all the
time.

ELIAN: But the troopers just shot a protester, we have to respond in
some way and we’re stronger if we respond with King.

After students finish debating the questions, we read what really
happened in a short excerpt I adapted from Clayborne Carson’s In
Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
[[link removed]]. Students
often leave this case study a little frustrated with King’s actions
in _Selma_ — a stark difference to how students feel after
watching the movie, Selma. Aris commented, “The first march he
wasn’t there. The second march he’s there, but turns it around.
What’s up with this guy?” In our debrief discussion, we return to
the philosophical differences between SNCC and SCLC to answer this. I
point out to students that at least in this instance, the SCLC’s
strategy worked and the Voting Rights Act was introduced out of the
crisis in Selma. But my student Francisco would not let SCLC off the
hook: “But they came in after SNCC had been working in Selma for two
years. So who’s to say SNCC’s strategy didn’t work?” The point
of this case study is not to answer these questions for students —
but to get them to grapple with different organizing models for social
change.

The next day we started on the second case study, which takes students
through the SNCC organizing campaign in Lowndes County, Alabama
[[link removed]].
The format is identical to the previous day’s, so students come
ready to dive in. One question asks students how SNCC will respond to
increasing white terror. Another question, set after the Voting Rights
Act, asks students now that most official barriers to Blacks voting
have come down, should people vote for the Democratic Party?
Especially given that Alabama’s Democrats have a slogan that touts
“white supremacy?”

In addition to the voting rights campaign in Lowndes, the debrief
reading for this case study takes students through the birth of the
original Black Panther Party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization
(LCFO)
[[link removed]],
and their impressive showing in the 1966 elections. In less than two
years, Lowndes County went from a place that had not one registered
Black voter to a model of independent Black organization that others
aimed to emulate across the country.

WHY LEARN SNCC?

Probably the most important part of SNCC’s legacy is not its
nonviolent direct action tactics, but its base-building through
community organizing. SNCC was influenced by the communities in which
they organized, just as SNCC influenced them. The debates throughout
SNCC’s various organizing campaigns reflect this relationship with
the communities in which they organized. Playing out these debates in
the classroom shows students that social movements aren’t only about
protest — but also about tactics, strategy, and the ability to hold
a debate and move forward together. Tracking SNCC’s ideological
transformation can also help highlight how social movements can
quickly radicalize, as what seemed impossible only a few years before
is made possible through protest and organization.

Too often, the experience of SNCC is ignored when we teach the history
of the Civil Rights Movement. Instead, the movement is often taught
with a focus on prominent movement leaders. The “Rosa sat and Martin
dreamed” narrative not only trivializes the role of these activists,
it robs us of the deeper history of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s
not enough for students to simply learn about the sit-ins or Freedom
Rides. SNCC’s organizing campaigns need to be at the center of civil
rights curriculum. In today’s racist world, students need to grasp
that social change does not simply occur by finding the right tactic
to implement — or waiting around for a strong leader to emerge —
but through slow, patient organizing that empowers oppressed
communities. This crucial lesson of the Civil Rights Movement will
help us plot a course for our movements today — and may help
students imagine playing a role in those movements. As my student
Nakiyah wrote me in her final course evaluation, “Learning about
SNCC was so interesting because SNCC was so effective. Knowing that
the racism they experienced still exists in a similar but different
way today made me want to make a change and gather my generation to
fight.”

RESOURCE

For Adam Sanchez’s SNCC handout and role play, go
here: [link removed]

Illustrator: Danny Lyon (Magnum)

* SNCC
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* teaching
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* teaching history
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* civil rights movement
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