River of No Return

River of No Return is the autobiography of Cleveland Sellers, who got involved in the Civil Rights movement in 1960 while still a high school student living in the completely segregated town of Denmark, South Carolina. In his remarkable book he leads the reader to understand not only what it meant to be Black in this town but also, to some extent, what it meant to be White, and why the Whites in the town were so surprised when the first anti-segregation sit-in occurred at a lunch counter in Denmark, S.C. In the process he chronicles the birth and demise of the group S.N.C.C., or Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a Civil Rights group not satisfied with the N.A.C.C. P.'s willingness to accept the status quo and try to bring equality about slowly and gradually. As Sellers says, during his first sit-in, he thought it was "about the hamburger," that the goal was to get served in a non-segregated way. The book shows how his understanding of the issues grows past the idea that the goal was to eat a hamburger in the "White" section to bringing about fundamental, profound changes in American society that would bring African-Americans true equality.

Sellers demonstrates that many people in the Black community of Denmark were uncomfortable with his growing activism. His mother received critical remarks about him; the President of black, local, Vorhees College was fired when the students became too active for the taste of the Board of Trustees; and his determination to continue with his activist activities caused a major rift between his father, whom he idolized, and himself. He notes that young Black college students across the South had similar confrontations with their parents as the sit-in movement grew.

The students who began the sit-in movement joined S.N.C.C. just as it was forming, putting Sellers virtually at the beginning of this organization. As a teenager he faced difficult times as the next few years unfolded, including the murder of Civil Rights workers in Meridian, MS in 1963, and the shift of emphasis within the S.N.C.C. On politics rather than integration and voter registration. He also saw the S.N.C.C. gradually distance itself from the White activists who had been welcomed as people ready to work with them for a common cause at the beginning. In the process, he watched as White critics attempted to pretend that it was "about the hamburger," and that they might accept certain adjustments in the Jim Crow rules if the balance of power did not shift, and claims in newspapers that Civil Rights workers who had disappeared were in hiding, either to make it look like foul play when it wasn't, or simply because they were cowards who couldn't face the consequences of their actions.

As a rift developed within the leadership of the S.N.C.C., those opposed to their goals took advantage of it to undermine their efforts. The group had shifted from some college students trying to get a hamburger while sitting at the Walgreen's counter to young adults who knew African-American babies were starving to death and that young Black men were still being lynched. They recognized that they were revolutionaries, and that the struggle was not about the hamburger, but what the hamburger represented -- full and equal access to all aspects of American society, including the one most threatening to Whites: a true political voice.

As these young leaders matured, they saw the fight for Civil Rights move beyond the South to major cities in the North, Midwest and West, including Harlem in New York City, Watts in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. One of S.N.C. C.'s first members, Julian Bond, ran for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives. The Viet Nam War had become a concern, and a student leader in Alabama was shot for attempting to use a "Whites Only" restroom in a gas station. The juxtaposition of African-American men sent to liberate Viet Nam while they had virtually no political say in their own country and could be shot over using the wrong bathroom was not lost on S.N.C.C. "Black Consciousness" became more and more important to its members even though 25% of their members were White. This issue was forced when two White members wanted to use S.N.C.C. To organize poor Whites in Louisiana, while Black leaders of the group continued to be arrested on what seemed like trumped-up charges. What should have been small-scale events turned into full-blown riots. Just when it seemed it could get no worse, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis.