Existing comment:
SNCC's Influence Wanes:
A driving force in civil rights protests from sit-ins to Selma, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) struggled to survive after it rejected nonviolence in favor of the more militant Black Panther philosophy. With its new focus on black self-reliance, SNCC purged white activists from its ranks. Amid internal divisions and negative press coverage, membership and funding dwindled. The group was nearing bankruptcy.
Controversial SNCC Chairman Stokely Carmichael -- who launched the Black Power movement in 1966 -- stepped down in May 1967 and embarked on a give-month world tour, traveling to communist Cuba, North Vietnam and Africa to promote Black Power as a global revolution. Carmichael's radical speeches and meetings with communist leaders enraged American politicians and journalists, who accused him to treason.
Carmichael who succeeded at SNCC by H. Rap Brown, a 23-year-old grass-roots organizer whose firebrand rhetoric further damaged the group's reputation. |