SNCC 60th

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.

Both Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson thought our “trouble-making” interfered with their political agendas and they used the instruments of government to sabotage us. What was in motion, however, stayed in motion.

Indeed, the political minority of the 1960s has proven to be the political majority in 2020. This multi-racial, multi-ethnic majority represents a bright future for America.

This majority, which received over 77 million votes, is now opposed by the former majority, which received approximately 72 million votes. The question going forward is: whose interest will prevail?