SNCC 60th

However, due to COVID-19 and its devastation, we rescheduled the Convening for June 3-5, 2021.  The Convening Planning Committee hoped that a 15-month postponement would allow for an in-person gathering.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, and the DC Mayor's Emergency Order prohibits indoor gatherings of more than ten people.

Therefore, the Convening Planning Committee must cancel the June in-person meeting, and has decided to move the SNCC 60th Anniversary Convening to a virtual Convening on October 14-16, 2021.

These dates honor the October 14-16, 1960 meeting in Atlanta, when student representatives decided to make SNCC a permanent organization. The 1960 meeting invitation noted that it would be “action-oriented”.

We are disappointed that the in-person meeting is not possible at this time.  The Planning Committee has been really gratified to hear from a number of today’s activists that they feel it is important to have the Convening to facilitate necessary inter-generational meetings.

It was hoped that these inter-generational meetings would allow us to discuss, together, how we could best support each other across generations of organizers. Fortunately, the SNCC Legacy Project has continued to be engaged with today’s activists through small virtual meetings.

The Planning Committee will now discuss how to enlarge those meetings for the Convening in October 2021. In addition, many SNCC veterans were really looking forward to informal and personal conversations with friends of many years. Much of that will now have to be done virtually.

The Planning Committee is considering how to ensure that these intimate connections are made in small group settings in a way that allows for in-depth conversation.