SNCC, Core, and the Sclc

SNCC, CORE, and the SCLC

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was organized for the express purpose of taking real action against segregation laws throughout the South. The primary action advocated by the group, however, was really a non-action -- boycotting. While this finally proved effective in Montgomery, Alabama and eventually in other locales, many activists believed that this method was still to slow and non-confrontational. Though they practiced methods of non-violence for most of their existence, the younger radicals that became members of Congress of Racial Equality and/or formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee took more direct action than did their counterparts in the SCLC.

These differences were not especially significant throughout most of the 1960s; though the actions of the SNCC and CORE brought more attention to many of the Jim Crow laws than did the SCLC, the leadership was not as prominent, and they were helping to shed focus on an agenda shared by the older and more respected members of the SCLC. Rightly or wrongly, it was these leaders -- especially Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- that had the ear of the national public, both amongst most African-Americans and certainly among white sympathizers. Given the close alignment of the groups' ideals, the more direct actions of the SNCC and CORE did not lead to any significant differences with the SCLC.

That being said, more direct action receives more direct results. The sit ins and Freedom Rides organized by the SNCC and CORE galvanize attention and passion in the Civil Rights movement.

Civil Rights: 1954-1964

Despite the continued struggle for true equality since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the decade leading up to this Act's passage must be considered one of the most successful in the timeline of the Civil Rights movement. Beginning with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Kansas Board of Education and culminating with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this decade saw the eradication of many Jim Crow laws. Though the Act only marked the beginning of achieving legal equality, with many court battles still to be fought, it was a major and quite necessary step in the Civil Rights movement.