SNCC 60th

Today’s activists should be praised and thanked for their extraordinary participation in this election. These young people not only voted, but they organized others to vote— some for the first time—through voter registration campaigns, texts, non-contact canvassing, voter

mobilization and education through social media, and peer-to-peer discussions. Their organizations include the Dream Defenders, BYP 100, Woke Vote, New Georgia Project, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), and many other organizations in the Movement 4 Black Lives.

Members of these organizations will continue on a life-long journey to ensure that the political and economic interests of the Black community are realized.

As veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) we began what must be recognized as a marathon, starting with the formation of SNCC at Shaw University in April 1960.

Many of us were still teenagers and in our early twenties, and we were confronted with a white supremacist American society that had built a political consensus that excluded the Black community.

Our only option for achieving change was to disrupt the status quo. As the late Congressman John Lewis—a SNCC veteran and SNCC chair —used to say, “get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Let’s remember: SNCC conducted its “disruptive” activities with the support of only a minority of people in the white community, who were often viewed by the larger white community as communists and hatefully called n****r lovers.

With its sit-ins; voter registration drives that focused on sharecroppers not formally educated to assume leadership positions; opposition to literacy tests; and insistence on one person, one vote, we sought to upend the established political order.