revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

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The student leaders decided to remain independent of all
the adult
civil rights organizations . They formed a coordinating committee called
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) . When SNCC was
formed, it served as an ad hoc coordinating committee for local centers of
action . In the early sixties, SNCC provided the movement with a center
for non-violent direct action against racial discrimination . In the North,
white students formed the Northern Student Movement (NSM) that raised funds
for SNCC .
The turning point for SNCC came when the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) started the freedom rides in 1961 .
Members of CORE began the freedom rides on May 14, 1961, to test a
Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in transportation terminals .
After one of CORE's integrated buses was bombed on May 20 near Anniston,
Alabama and another was mobbed in Birmingham, CORE decided to call off its
rides . 37
A group of Nashville SNCC students, led by Diane Nash and
students in
Atlanta, continued the Freedmon Rides . They decided to leave school for the
movement . Most of those who left school promised to give SNCC a year,
others a full time commitment . Black students re-activated the movement in
1961, and before the summer was over, students from all over the country
had taken rides in the South .
In the fail of '61, SNCC found it increasingly difficult to keep
action going on the college campuses . By this time, a core of students had
left school and were working full time with SNCC . This transformed SNCC
37 Bracey, Meire, Rudwick, Conflict and Competition : Studies on the
Recent Black Protest Movement 7Belmont, California : Wadsworth Publishing
Company, 1971), p . 140 .