Chicago SNCC History Project Archives

Organization History

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in 1960 on the initiative of Ella Baker, a member and former executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Seeing the need to capitalize on the student sit-in movement across the South and to incorporate more youth into the civil rights movement, Baker held a conference for student leaders in April of 1960 on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Out of the conference, SNCC was born. Nonviolent in its orientation, but seeking to connect more militant student protest groups across the nation, SNCC later began to shift its focus from desegregation protests to voting rights and voter registration, helping to found and establish Freedom Schools as well as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1963 and 1964, respectively.

SNCC was not a membership-based organization, but consisted of SNCC staff. Though its headquarters was in Atlanta, Georgia, SNCC members lived in and adopted the concerns of black communities in Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and in other states across the South. The group saw itself as catalysts for change rather than leaders. SNCC sought to aid in the development of local black leaders and local black institutions which would outlive the group’s presence. This particular brand of organizing and difference in perspective often resulted in clashes between SNCC and other civil rights organizations like the SCLC and the NAACP, especially in the mid-1960s. In 1966, Stokely Carmichael replaced John Lewis as chairman of SNCC, reflecting the organization’s shift towards a more racially separate and militant Black Power stance. By 1968, SNCC was only a shadow of its former self as financial troubles, dwindling staff, internal conflicts and police repression weakened the organization’s support and impact.

The Chicago Area Friends of SNCC (CAFSNCC) was founded in January of 1963 by a small group of Chicago activists interested in supporting and lending financial assistance to SNCC’s work in the South through fundraising, clothing and food drives, and recruitment. Similar to other “Friends of SNCC” groups which operated mainly in the northern and western part of the United States, CAFSNCC held close ties with the Southern movement. The CAFSNCC differed from other “Friends of SNCC” groups in the extent of its involvement in many local Chicago civil rights struggles such as adequate and fair employment, education and housing for African Americans. They played an important role in the 1963 Chicago Schools Boycott. As part of Freedom Day activities, the CAFSNCC organized Freedom Schools for children to attend where they could learn about the history of African American freedom struggles. Autonomous in structure, the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC, unlike SNCC, was membership based. With the collapse of SNCC at the national level, the CAFSNCC ended around 1968.