Elite Philanthropy, SNCC, And The Civil Rights Movement
http://www.swans.com/library/art16/barker68.html
(Part II of III)
by Michael Barker
November 15, 2010
As always, the discussion of radicalism versus reformism -- or even
challenging versus accommodating forms of activism -- played an
important part in the evolution of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Negro activists from the South
involved with SNCC were particularly wary of the more moderate
ambitions of "white liberals with money and of the national
government," both of whom were supportive of concentrating on voter
registration and backing "Robert Kennedy's call for a 'cooling-off'
period during the Freedom Rides," which "reinforced the suspicion
that an attempt was being made to cool the militancy of the student
movement and divert the youngsters to slower, safer activity." As it
turned out such concerns were valid, and on June 16, 1961, various
civil rights groups (including SNCC) met with Robert Kennedy, where
he proceeded to assure activists that if they redirected their
energies towards voter registration, "financial support for such
projects would be made available by private foundations." (1) But
this was not all, and well in advance of the Kennedy meeting the
Justice Department's civil rights chief Burke Marshall, the outgoing
Southern Regional Council executive director Harold Fleming, and the
philanthropist Stephen Currier, (2) had...
...devised a plan for the establishment of a privately funded,
nonpartisan, region-wide registration drive that would coordinate the
efforts of all the interested civil rights organizations. The Justice
Department, of course, could not finance voter registration, but a
well-funded private initiative would mesh neatly with the
Kennedy-Marshall idea that filing federal voting rights suits would
be more effective than pursuing legislative battles with an
unresponsive Congress. Fleming's proposal gained strength throughout
the summer. At an informal retreat on June 9 in Capahosic, Virginia,
civil rights representatives responded enthusiastically to the idea. (3)
In this regard, the SNCC's Timothy Jenkins then met with Harry
Belafonte to discuss fundraising plans for voter registration,
Belafonte acting as an important go-between, as he was "a personal
friend of the Kennedys who was earlier involved in the discussions
with Justice Department officials regarding voter registration." (4)
Jenkins subsequently secured funding from the New World Foundation to
hold a three-week student leadership seminar in Nashville beginning
on July 30, 1961. "We made a calculated attempt to pull the best
people out of the movement," Jenkins commented, "and give them a
solid academic approach to understanding the movement." (5)
Howard Zinn provides a useful overview of these events:
Through the summer of 1961, fifteen or twenty people on the
Coordinating Committee were meeting every month: at Louisville in
June, at Baltimore in July, at the Highlander Folk School, Tennessee,
in August. Tim Jenkins, a slim, energetic, bright young Negro who was
vice-president of the National Student Association, came to the June
meeting with a proposal that SNCC make the registration of Negro
voters in the South its main activity. That started a controversy
which simmered, unsettled, throughout the summer. It came to a boil
at the Highlander meeting in August, where the issue was posed
sharply: would SNCC concentrate on a methodical, grinding campaign to
register Negro voters in the Black Belt? Or would it conduct more
sensational direct-action campaigns -- sit-ins, kneel-ins, wade-ins,
picket lines, boycotts, etc. -- to desegregate public facilities?
Even before the Freedom Rides began, Jenkins had been attending a
series of meetings in which representatives of several foundations,
including the Taconic and the Field Foundations, discussed the
raising of substantial funds to support a large-scale voter
registration effort in the South. Present at these meetings were
Burke Marshall, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil
Rights Division, and Harris Wofford, special assistant to President
Kennedy on civil rights. Jenkins was asked by the Foundation people
to broach the idea to his friends in SNCC. (6)
With Jenkins strongly committed to abstaining from direct action in
favor of voter registration drives, inevitable splits were aggravated
within the newly formed organization at the August Highlander
meeting. SNCC adviser Ella Baker thus played a critical role in
helping to "reconcile the opposing viewpoints." This led to a
compromise whereby two arms of SNCC were created, with Diane Nash
managing their direct action projects, and Charles Jones in charge of
their voter registration work. (7) Later in the year, Jim Forman, a
thirty-three-year-old teacher, was recruited by Nash to become the
SNCC's executive secretary.
Forman recalled that prior to his joining SNCC in the summer of 1961,
contact had already been made with the government and foundations to
finance voter education efforts. Yet although these meetings
continued when he was at the helm of the SNCC, in retrospect he
described the Voter Education Project as a "tax dodge" used by
foundations that were friendly to the Democratic Party ("especially
Field and Taconic" foundations) to register Democratic voters.
However, he still felt justified in taking this funding, as he noted
that SNCC used it to "lay bare the injustices perpetrated upon black
people -- among them denial of the vote" -- taking their work into
the rural areas where physical repression was strongest. He added:
"We would be walking a thin line of contradiction in the American
system, but we felt able to do it." (8)
In the wake of McCarthyism, accepting grants from more radical
philanthropic sources also provided food for thought for Forman. For
instance, one "important addition to SNCC's meager income" around
this time came from Anne Braden in the form of a $5,000 grant from
the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), which was approved
during the summer of 1961, and was "subsequently renewed for two
years." This support raised the hackles of conservatives as SCEF had
been "founded during the 1930s with the help of communists." However,
by the 1960s the group was well accepted by liberals, and "its
supporters included many noncommunists, including Eleanor Roosevelt."
(9) Nevertheless, obtaining such monies was not without it own
attendant problems, and Forman recounts how when he went to visit
Andrew Norman (in 1962) to talk about obtaining funding from the
Norman Fund, he was "told that it would be impossible to get money
from them as long as we accepted help from SCEF." Forman rejected
this blunt advice, and significantly went on to point out how "[T]he
Norman Fund was later implicated as a CIA conduit in the exposure of
the operations of the CIA and the National Student Association." (10)
In the face of such problems SNCC's money problems continued, and
Forman recalls how in 1963, "I continued to be overworked, worried
about the lack of money and the survival of SNCC, and tense from
fieldwork in the Deep South." However, he writes that although he
accepted the idea that donating money to support activism is a
political issue, "I also reject the popular notion that he who pays
the piper calls the tune, for my experience has been that you can put
radical policies up front and stick to them and still get financial
help." Yet despite SNCC's fetish for decentralization,
ideologically-speaking his organization was just the type of group
that could be influenced by elite funders, as "[o]pen criticism and
self-criticism were not the style of the SNCC" and, as Forman
continues with respect to their work in 1964, their "lack of
ideology" meant they were "caught in the habits of thinking about
short-term objectives only." This is on top of the fact that SNCC had
systemic funding problems. (11)
Such problems escalated during the summer of 1963 in the wake of the
June 12 assassination of Medgar Evers (in Jackson, Mississippi) when
the liberal financial backers of the civil rights movement took more
affirmative steps to pacify its increasing militancy. Taconic
Foundation officials feared that the news of assassination "could
mean 'a terrible blowup in the South,' [their executive director Jane
Lee J.] Eddy remembered, and they wondered what they could do to
help." (12) Thus, with "the prompting of Robert Kennedy, Attorney
General in the Kennedy administration," and "[u]nder the direction of
philanthropist Stephen Currier of the Taconic Foundation" -- with the
additional support of the Norman and the New York Foundations -- the
Council for United Civil Rights Leadership was formed to coordinate
planning for the March on Washington, and to organize funding for
voter registration drives.
The Council for United Civil Rights Leadership was co-chaired by
Stephen Currier and Whitney Young (an individual who in 1968 went on
to become a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation), and was based on
the informal meetings they had organized with moderate civil rights
leaders during the early parts of the year. (13) Currier raised
$800,000 to be dispensed by this Council, funding which drew the SNCC
reluctantly (at Forman's insistence) into the coalition. Yet because
SNCC representatives "wanted the financial backing of liberals but
refused to restrain their militancy or to discontinue their attempts
to expose liberal hypocrisy," SNCC only received $15,000 of the
initial funds. (14)
So despite all of SNCC's organizing successes, the organization "was
actually in crisis in the Deep South" and the "lack of funds barely
allowed SNCC to support its existing staff and field workers." This,
combined with the "lack of public visibility or federal protection,"
meant that the organizers and the people they tried to recruit on
their morale-sapping voter registration drives -- which had resulted
in the registration of about five percent of the black voting age
population -- were exposed to real danger. So it is significant that
at this point of organizational vulnerability Tim Jenkins, who was
down in Mississippi on summer break from Yale Law School with some
legal friends, "discovered a statute that allowed residents to cast
protest votes in party primaries." (15) This led to a refocus of
SNCC's work on the idea of the Freedom Vote.
As the idea of the Freedom Vote spread, so did white terror. Medgar
Evers of the state NAACP had been murdered in June 1963. Court
injunctions prevented political protest in Greenwood and elsewhere.
Massive violence and heavy fines were slowing down COFO [Council of
Federated Organizations] activity. In the midst of these traumatic
events, an energetic Democratic Party organizer and white New Yorker
named Allard Lowenstein first visited the COFO projects determined to
find ways to increase the movement's visibility. (16)
With the support of some parts of COFO, Lowenstein -- whom Foreman
later came to suspect of being "close to CIA circles if not actually
on its payroll" (17) -- soon began to recruit northern white students
to work as volunteers on the Freedom Vote project: he was able to do
this "through contacts developed as an instructor at Yale Law School
and as dean of freshman at Stanford." As it turned out, Lowenstein's
"style jarred many SNCC people, especially Ella Baker"; and while he
succeeded in bringing publicity to the campaign, "his approach
contradicted the strategic practice SNCC had used since initiating
the Mississippi project -- a relentless focus on developing local,
long-term leadership." In fact, the "majority of COFO workers
expressed concern that northern whites would usurp leadership
positions, draw publicity, and then leave," but the SNCC's
recruitment drive for the Mississippi Summer Project went ahead anyway. (18)
It was an agonizing irony that at the very moment local blacks began
to take the initiative, some members of SNCC argued that only
national publicity and federal intervention could sustain the
movement in the face of the white terrorist response to that initiative. (19)
The first batch of some 100 students (recruited by Lowenstein)
traveled down to help with the Freedom Vote in late 1963, paving the
way for the following year's Freedom Summer that saw a further 1,000
people, mostly students "drawn from elite colleges and universities,"
journey south to Mississippi. (20) Financial matters again played a
critical role in reinforcing the decision for SNCC to recruit Ivy
League students, as they "simply lacked the resources to subsidize
the participation of the summer volunteers." (21) This led some
commentators to suggest that the SNNC (and CORE) workers "were in
essence a substitute bourgeoisie in the uniforms of the proletariat."
(22) Irrespective of these internal problems, the national media
loved this Manichean campaign for justice, and "other than the year's
Presidential campaign, it was ... the nation's top news story that
summer." In this way, "by undermining the popular view of the
political left and activism evident during the McCarthy era, the
Summer Project subtly paved the way for the events of the later Sixties." (23)
Backtracking a little to just prior to the heated activism of the
Freedom Summer, in late April 1964, SNCC took a lead role in
establishing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) -- a
body whose creation was intended to be "largely symbolic" in that it
afforded SNCC "another opportunity to demonstrate the willingness and
desire of Mississippi's black population to participate in the
state's political process." (24) Without going into the full details
of the Establishment's resistance to MFDP's activities it should be
noted that:
The White House let it be known that the seating of the MFDP
delegation would damage the vice-presidential prospects of Hubert
Humphrey. The move was probably directed at Joseph Rauh, the MFDP's
chief counsel and long-time Humphrey supporter [as well as vice
president of Americans for Democratic Action]. In turn, Humphrey's
staff pressured Rauh to urge moderation and compromise on the MFDP
delegation. Walter Reuther, Rauh's immediate superior and the
President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) flew in for a bit of
backstage arm twisting of his own. He threatened to pull all of the
UAW's money out of Mississippi should the MFDP persist in its challenge. (25)
Such bullying evidently succeeded, and growing support for the MFDP
challenge to the seating of the regular Mississippi delegation at the
National Democratic Convention (held in Atlanta City) quickly
"evaporated." (26) Elite pressure set in motion to counter their
activism was, however, not the least of SNCC's worries, and
reflecting upon the summer's work, Forman points out that these
events meant that SNCC attained more power than ever before and
"thereby accentuated conflicts within SNCC that ultimately aided in
our disintegration." He added, "[T]hat same power also led to an
intensified campaign by the Establishment to destroy SNCC." (27)
Likewise, funding continued to be a crucial but neglected issue, and
"in the wake of the liberal Democrat's betrayal at Atlantic City,"
despite Bob Moses's recognition of "SNCC's need for an independent
economic base," little was done to remedy this situation. (28)
Reflecting on this problem in an interview undertaken in 1982, Moses
said: "It was a weakness on our part, that we left the worries about
fundraising to Jim [Forman] so the whole weight of the fundraising
fell on his shoulders." (29)
Spurred by the defeat of the MFDP challenge, SNCC workers began to
look beyond their own experiences for ideological insights. An
unexpected turn in this search for new ideas came in the fall of 1964
when SNCC accepted the invitation of Harry Belafonte to send a
delegation to Africa. [...] Although Jim Forman later concluded it
was "a serious mistake" to approve the trip before resolving
questions about SNCC's direction at home, the chance to tour Africa
was irresistible. (30)
--
Notes
1. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of
the 1960s (Harvard University Press, 1981), p.39. This is not to
suggest that activists engaged in voter registration were free from
the ongoing threat of murder, because: "To white authorities in
Mississippi, no action by blacks was 'moderate'; only total passivity
and total acquiescence to all the customs and expectations of a white
supremacist society were considered acceptable conduct." Wesley
Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America
(University of North Carolina Press, 2007), pp.58-9. (back)
2. In 1944, the Southern Regional Council had superseded the
Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC) and was "largely" funded
by the Rockefeller philanthropies and the Rosenwald Fund; prior to
that, the CIC, which had been established in 1919, had "benefited
from substantial amounts of Rockefeller money, first channeled
through the War Work Council of the YMCA and during the 1920s donated
directly by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial." August Meier and
Elliot Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession 1915-1980
(University of Illinois Press, 1986), p.69, p.17.
Stephen Currier, the scion of a banking fortune who became a civil
rights activist, and Audrey Bruce Currier, the granddaughter of
Andrew W. Mellon, became major funders of the civil rights movement
in 1958 when they established the Taconic Foundation. When they both
died in 1967 (at age 36 and 33, respectively) they left a further $20
million to support civil rights activism. One might also add that
Harold Fleming, after leaving the Southern Regional Council, had
joined the newly established Potomac Institute, a body that had been
created with the financial backing of the Taconic Foundation. (back)
3. David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Random House, 1988), p.162.
For more on Robert Kennedy's duplicity, note that: "After first
arguing with civil rights workers that the Justice Department simply
did not have the statutory authority to go into court to protect them
against police brutality, the Kennedy Administration omitted such a
provision from its proposed Civil Rights Bill. When a subcommittee of
the House inserted this authority into the bill, Attorney General
Robert Kennedy went before it, in October of 1963, to argue against
its inclusion, and it was removed." Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New
Abolitionists (Beacon Press, 1964), p.208.
For a discussion of the role that "Southern moderates" like
Governor-elect James Plemon (J.P.) Coleman (D-MS), played in
designing Jim Crow's institutional ghost, see Anders Walker, The
Ghost of Jim Crow: How Southern Moderates Used Brown v. Board of
Education to Stall Civil Rights (Oxford University Press, 2009). For
example, even prior to the Brown decision, Coleman "began to develop
pupil placement, a legal plan that removed overt racial
classifications from southern state law and replaced them with more
neutral classifications that could be used as substitutes for race,
such as academic performance and moral background." (p.13) (back)
4. Carson, In Struggle, p.39. Prior to this Jenkins "had also
participated in the Justice Department meetings and, along with
several other SNCC members, had become convinced that SNCC should
develop political programs to attract financial support that would
otherwise go to the older civil rights organizations." (p.39) Jenkins
would go on to serve as a member of both the SNCC's coordinating
committee and of Students for a Democratic Society's executive
committee. (p.54) (back)
5. Carson, In Struggle, p.41. (Direct Quote) (back)
6. Zinn, SNCC, p.58. (back)
7. Zinn, SNCC, p.59. (back)
8. James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Open Hand
Publishing, 1985 [1972]), p.265.
"Most of the funds [for the Voter Education Project] were provided by
the Taconic Foundation, the Field Foundation, and the Edgar Stern
Family Fund. Their contributions, respectively, were $339,000,
$225,000, and $219,000." Pat Watters and Reese Cleghorn, Climbing
Jacob's Ladder: The Arrival of Negroes in Southern Politics
(Harcourt, 1967), p.45. (back)
9. Carson, In Struggle, p.52, p.51. In 1942, one of the founders of
the Highlander Center, James Dombrowski, moved from Highlander to
become the general of the Southern Conference Education Fund. SCEF
stalwart Anne Braden would go on to play a central role in founding
the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic & Social Justice in
1975. (back)
10. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.272. (back)
11. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.292, p.293,
p.436, p.448. By way of another example, Forman writes: "As the
Summer of 1962 approached, SNCC faced a debt of thirteen thousand
dollars and no funds from the Voter Education Project had yet come
through. There was no prospect of raising money from any other
source. Through the winter we had continued to exist borrowing from
others to pay off the first debts." (pp.269-70) (back)
12. Craig Jenkins and Abigail Halcli, "Grassrooting the System? The
Development and Impact of Social Movement Philanthropy, 1953-1990,"
In: Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (ed.), Philanthropic Foundations: New
Scholarship, New Possibilities (Indiana University Press, 1999),
pp.232-3; Carson, In Struggle, p.92; Nancy Weiss, Whitney M. Young,
Jr., and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Princeton University Press,
1989), p.115. (back)
13. Weiss, Whitney M. Young, Jr., and the Struggle for Civil Rights,
p.113. Just prior to becoming the executive director of National
Urban League (in 1961) Whitney Young was selected by league board
member and influential Rockefeller representative Lindsley Kimball to
undertake a Rockefeller-funded sabbatical at Harvard University "as
part of the plan to groom him for his new responsibilities." (p.78)
Weiss notes that "looking after the Urban League had been a
Rockefeller family tradition. In its earliest years, John D., Jr.,
had been the largest single contributor; in the 1940s his son
Winthrop, a trustee, had shaped its fundraising efforts. A personal
gift from Winthrop had enabled the league, in 1956, to acquire its
first permanent headquarters building on East Forty-Eighth Street in
New York. Not long thereafter, Winthrop had moved to Arkansas, where
he would later develop a political career. In his absence, and with
the league in real difficulty, the Rockefellers suggested that
Kimball go on the board and see what he could do to invigorate the
organization. He thought that the first priority was to make a change
in its leadership." Hence Young came to power. (p.74) (back)
14. Carson, In Struggle, p.92. (back)
15. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, p.143, p.144. (back)
16. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, p.146. Organized to distribute
funds for the Voter Education Project, COFO member organizations
included the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC. Aaron Henry, the state
president of the NAACP, was named president of COFO, and Robert Moses
was named their director. (back)
17. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.358. (back)
18. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, p.146, p.150. Also see note 50,
p.355. With regard to Forman's previous encounter with Lowenstein,
who had also been the former president of the National Students
Association (NSA) from 1950 until 1951, Forman recalled: "Seven years
had passed since I had seen him in action at the [1956] NSA
conference, slickly manipulating a conservative victory, arrogantly
using a black delegate for that purpose, wheeling and dealing all
over the place." (p.356) Forman adds that although at the time SNCC
did not realise the "full implications of Lowenstein's presence in
Mississippi in 1963" they later determined that, initially as just an
observer, "he represented a whole body of influential forces seeking
to prevent SNCC from becoming too radical and to bring it under the
control of... the liberal-labor syndrome." Forman identifies
influential white members of the syndrome to have been poverty
"expert" Michael Harrington, and general counsel for the UAW, Joseph
Rauh. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.357. (back)
19. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, p.150. "For his part, Moses saw
merit on both sides of this argument [for and against the used of
northern whites in the Freedom Project]. For very practical reasons,
he felt that 'the people who did the work should make the decision,'
and a majority of the staff did not want the Summer Project. Yet
Moses was forced to weigh this reality against the white terror that
paralyzed all organizing, which risked the collapse of the whole
movement through despair and resignation. Moreover, many staffers
were 'already burnt out,' and SNCC had no rejuvenatory measures to
offer them. While the flexibility and adhoc nature of the
organization had initially been an asset, it was not foolproof.
Volunteer psychiatrists, weekends in California or New York, and
visits from celebrities all helped the SNCC workers continue. But
long-term recuperation was not an option. As Moses said, 'We didn't
have any resources; we didn't have any money.'" (p.153) In addition,
"The murder of Louis Allen in January 1964 pushed Moses decisively
toward supporting the Summer Project." (p.154) (back)
20. Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (Oxford University Press, 1988),
p.37, p.5. "For the most part, they were liberals, not radicals;
reformers rather than revolutionaries." (p.5) (back)
21. McAdam, Freedom Summer, p.40. As an example of the type of
external funding-related pressures being exerted on SNCC during
preparations for the Freedom Summer, Forman recalled how: "It was
Currier who first raise with me the question of SNCC's intention to
use the services of the Laywers Guild in the upcoming Mississippi
Summer Project -- a question which would bring the wrath of the
mighty down on our heads. Currier had asked me to meet him alone one
day at the Potomac Institute and there explained that he and other
felt disturbed about our plan to use the Guild. I explained to him
our position on civil liberties and Red-baiting, and that we were not
going to change it." Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.367.
On June 1, 1962, SNCC had a deficit of over $10,000, and managed to
raise a further $50,000 during the remainder of that year to end with
a slight surplus. In 1963, however, SNCC's budget increased to
$309,000, "almost half" of which came "from institutional sources
(primarily religious organizations, labor unions, and foundations)."
Carson, In Struggle, p.71, p.315. (back)
22. Watters and Cleghorn, Climbing Jacob's Ladder, p.102.
"Establishing little libraries and health centers where there were
none, conducting voter registration efforts, organizing communities
into civic councils, the workers of SNCC and CORE were in essence a
substitute bourgeoisie in the uniforms of the proletariat. Perhaps
white Mississippi can be thankful for them on that ground alone; they
became a focal point for orderly action in a place where rising
discontent and distress might easily have exploded." (p.102) (back)
23. McAdam, Freedom Summer, p.116, p.118.
An important yet oft-forgotten part of SNCC's summer freedom schools
program was the creation of the Free Southern Theater (FST), which is
rarely mentioned in movement historiography, even through FST's
Summer Project tour was arguably "one of the most significant and
successful events of the summer." "In accepting that the culture of
the South needed changing, SNCC went further than other civil rights
organizations dared." Amiri Baraka's work on black nationalism proved
influential within the FST as it continued to develop during the
1960s, but despite FST's popularity they struggled to attract black
financial support for their work which "left them in debt to white
foundations, a paradoxical relationship that reflects the broader
relationship between many black nationalists and money from whites."
"In 1966, foundation support had been half that of the FST's own
fund-raising income, but the following years saw a steady decline in
the FST's precarious financial state. By 1967, foundation grants
dominated the FST's income. In 1968, the Rockefeller and Ford
foundations alone contributed more than half of FST's income. Both
donated even larger amounts in 1969. Although [their associate
director Thomas] Dent [a former public information director for
NAACP] had few qualms about lambasting the Rockefeller Foundation for
its patronizing middle-class attitude and its use of the FST to keep
the natives quiescent, he needed its money to prolong his quest to
inculcate an oppositional consciousness in the black population. Joe
Street, The Culture War in the Civil Rights Movement (University
Press of Florida, 2007), p.97, p.99, p.140. Street adds, that during
the late 1960s FST "served as a template for the many black
nationalist theater groups that emerged during this period." (p.141) (back)
24. McAdam, Freedom Summer, p.118. (back)
25. McAdam, Freedom Summer, pp.119-20. (back)
26. McAdam, Freedom Summer, p.120. It is worth observing that
financial incentives/grants (a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from
the National Science Foundation worth $30,000) enabled McAdam's
detailed and time consuming research for his book to be undertaken in
the first place. (p.viii) (back)
27. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.372. Writing in
1964, Zinn adds: "There are many things to criticize in SNCC. Though
it has fashioned a formidable apparatus since that day when Jim
Forman walked into a deserted, windowless cubby and found a month's
mail strewn on the floor, it is still not scrupulously
well-organized; letters may go unanswered, phone calls go unreturned,
meetings start late or never or without agendas. It is so quick to
act that it often does not stop and plan actions carefully to get the
most value from them. It does not take enough time to work out
long-range strategy. It is not groomed in the niceties of public
relations, and visitors to the Atlanta office sometimes complain of a
diffident reception. It exasperates its friends almost as often as it
harasses its enemies." Zinn, SNCC, p.216. (back)
28. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, p.200. Here Hogan provides further
details to support this point. Endnote #4 (p.374) reads: "See 'Rough
Minutes of a Meeting Called by the National Council of Churches to
Discuss the Mississippi Project,' 18 Sept. 1964, Mary King Papers.
Moses said that these minutes, which showed the clear danger of
SNCC's lack of an independent economic base, were distributed within
SNCC but no one responded to the warning (interview by Carson).
Paralleling this thinking, [Charles] Sherrod noted in November that
'the dollar will increasingly become hard to get.' The problem was
that one could not simultaneously fight state policies and ask the
state for economic support. 'That's the mistake we made in SNCC and
CORE and SCLC,' he stated years later. 'An organization could not
bite the hand that fed it.' Sherrod, Untitled Position Paper Prepared
for Waveland Staff Meeting, November 1964, Ewen Papers; Sherrod
interview. 'They're still making the same mistake,' Sherrod said of
the major civil rights organizations in the 1980s." (back)
29. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, pp.220-1. (back)
30. Carson, In Struggle, p.134. Carson suggests that "[p]erhaps the
most significant episode of their stay in Africa was an unexpected
encounter in Nairobi with Malcolm X" which led to a "series of
attempts by Malcolm to forge links with SNCC." (p.135) Indeed,
following on this chance meeting Malcolm continued to exert a strong
influence over the political development of both CORE and SNCC
activists. For example: "In early February 1965, Malcolm was asked by
SNCC to speak to black students and workers in Selma, Alabama." As
Manning Marable observes, "Malcolm's electrifying speech gave the
radical nationalist tendency within SNCC another boost." Manning
Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in
Black America, 1945-1990 (University Press of Mississippi, 1991
[1982]), p.90. (back)
.
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