SNCC book review essays

SNCC book review essays The evolution of SNCC is interesting because it began almost by accident but ended up having a profound effect not only on the Civil Rights movement but on multiple movements for change in the United States during that time, including the growing movement to protest the United State's involvement in Viet Nam. The book also makes an important point about historical movements: no one group will have all the answers any more than any one person will have all the answers. While Martin Luther King and his group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, tends to get most of the credit for gaining civil rights for all, they did not do it alone, and sometimes SNCC's contributions both in their actions and in their evolving philosophy were crucial. The book is divided into three major parts: "Coming Together," "Looking Inward," and "Falling Apart." As the author analyzes the actions and thought processes of those involved in SNCC, he reveals a much more three-dimensional picture of the group than people might otherwise be aware of. While the SNCC ended up promoting ideas that were much more radical and confrontational than those of SCLC, those who shaped the group's philosophy were thoughtful, determined people, not just angry young firebrands ready to lash back at a system that had wronged them. The word "non-violent" in their name is not double-talk. They started out embracing a non-violent approach to ending segregation in the south (eventually focusing more on voter registration) and only accepted confrontation as part of their strategy when they realized that non-violence by itself would In the first section, "Coming Together," the author describes the first student sit-in at a lunch counter. Early in February of 1960, four Black students from a Black college in Greensboro, North Carolina, walked into a Woolworth's lunch counter and sat down. This was...