C. Liegh McIness and Benj DeMott discuss the demise of SNCC, the nature of grassroots organizations, and the character of people who end up in them in the thread below. Their exchanges began after McIness pointed out to readers of his newsletter that Bill Clinton’s speech at John Lewis’s funeral included a “diss of Kwame Toure” (AKA Stokely Carmichael). Clinton had praised Lewis for having the character to resist those who called for Black Power in the Sixties:
Just three years later [after the March on Washington], [Lewis] lost the leadership of SNCC to Stokely Carmichael. Because it was a pretty good job for a guy that young and come from Troy, Alabama, it must have been painful to lose. But he showed as a young man there’s some things that you just cannot do to hang on to a position because, if you do, then you won’t be who you are anymore. And, I say there were two or three years there, where the movement went a little too far towards Stokely, but in the end, John Lewis prevailed.
To which McIness responded…
“I wonder if Clinton thinks that the current Black Lives Matter Movement is going ‘a little too far towards Stokely’? Yet, the real problem is not just that Clinton’s statements are patronizing; they are historically inaccurate…So, now, let’s do some unpacking.
First, Lewis didn’t just suddenly lose his position to Toure in 1966. The movement to replace Lewis as head of SNCC began in 1963 at The March on Washington because Lewis and other SNCC officials allowed Lewis’ speech to be edited by white benefactors to make the speech more palatable to a ‘wider’ white audience. Yet, in doing so, they gutted many of the primary demands and positions of SNCC. As former SNCC country organizer Hollis Watkins writes in Brother Hollis: The Sankofa of a Movement Man:
A major problem with The March was that there was a real disconnect between the “big people” at the top or on the national level and those of us working at the grassroots level. Those of us in Greenwood and basically all over Mississippi, including local community people and SNCC folks working in those communities, did not know that the folks sitting at the head of power, including top officials of the “major” Movement organizations, such as Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, King of SCLC, A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, James Farmer of CORE, Whitney Young of the Urban League, and John Lewis of SNCC, would relinquish so much to appease the white clergy and the Kennedy Administration. As we made a plan, they made one, which superseded and coopted our plans…Even more, we came to Washington with an agenda that had been developed by community people to deliver to the President. So, you can imagine our frustration when we realized that we were expected to be window dressing and rubber stamps for an agenda developed without the input of the people it was designed to help… The clearest example of how those at the top had decided to seize complete control and force the grassroots people merely to tow the company line was the requesting of John Lewis to rewrite his speech. Even though Lewis had been given a seat in the throne area, he could only keep it if he were willing to change what he had planned to say.
…So, what Clinton calls moving ‘a little too far towards Stokely’ is actually moving too far towards demanding equality and first-class citizenship, which means black people deciding for black people what is best for them.
While Lewis was a great man who dedicated his entire life to the liberation of African peoples from white supremacy, he was not perfect. Nobody is…To be clear, I’m not here to disparage his or Clinton’s legacy. I’m not one who seeks perfect people to work with African peoples to aid in our liberation from white supremacy. But, liberation can only be obtained if we are objective in both our praise and our criticism of our enemies and our allies. In this case, Clinton isn’t just historically wrong; his words are dangerous because they attempt to define what is right and what constitutes freedom for black folks.
What follows is the dialogue sparked by this critique…
DeMott: Thanks for calling Clinton on that anti-Stokely line…Reminds me there’s a book about SNCC, Wesley Hogan’s Many Minds, One Heart, with a good chapter on that big Waveland meeting over structure/leadership. (Link here.) Think it pretty much finishes the idea that SNCC’s demise was all about Black Powerites vs. aggrieved white radicals (and their brotherly/sisterly allies who still believed in Beloved Community). According to Hogan, the key to the internal conflict was resistance to James Forman and his crew’s desire for a top down party structure—wannabe Vanguardists vs. Bob Moses, Charles Sherrod et al. who weren’t down for that kind of hierarchy…Anyway, it makes for a fresher story!
McInnes: Thanks for Ms. Hogan’s work, which is thoughtful and empirical. I guess that SNCC’s final debate can be called a “structural” debate because the debate was, at the core, about how the organization would be structured to meet its mission, but that seems more like putting the cart before the horse. It seems, then, that the debate was ideological and that the battle over power/structure was merely a metaphor because most, if not all, realized that the one who holds/controls the power/structure determines which ideology is followed and how it is implemented. As such, the following statement from Ms. Hogan best describes the multifactorial downfall of SNCC: “However, it is critical to note that even if no one had stepped forward to organize against others in SNCC, multiple impediments – disagreement on priorities, the lack of a process to make decisions or educate new workers, money problems, the central and undiscussed dynamic of racial identity, the questions surrounding nonviolence, and the lack of interpersonal trust – now had the cumulative effect of inhibiting both candor and mutual respect. This situation was noted by nearly everyone in the group at this point, and surely would have presented a crisis throughout the fall of 1964 and into 1965 even if factions had not developed. No individual can be saddled with the blame. It seems to be a strategic point in time reached by every voluntary organization striving for an authentic organizational form. At a juncture where the group has had enough success to attract many others, it then becomes too large to continue to depend on personal ties to hold it together.” At the core, of course, there were several threads/ideas of which direction was most imperative for SNCC, and the question became how or who would decide the direction of the organization. Thus, the debate about the direction of SNCC became a debate about organizational structure, or the debate about organizational structure was a metaphor or cover for the debate about the direction of SNCC.
Ironically, Forman had a much more NAACP-ish understanding of organizations and organizing. “Forman, on the other hand, worked from a different understanding of politics. He thought the task was to ‘outmaneuver the racists … hammer against the federal government … consolidate our power and extend our influence.’” To be clear, one of the strengths of the NAACP is its ability to have a strong centralized government while allowing local branches to feel that they impact the national agenda. [See addendum for more reasons why the NAACP has survived (per McIness).]
The above leads to Hogan’s critical point: “Forman was very clear on this point: ‘Most [in SNCC], in fact, did not see themselves as creating an organization which would survive and seek power, but rather as working themselves out of business as a result of community organizing efforts that would spin off other organizations. Most did not see SNCC building a revolutionary organization.’ What Forman did not acknowledge was that the two groups differed on how to define revolution: for Forman, it was building a revolutionary organization to seek power. Sherrod and Moses saw power emanating from building people at the grassroots, so they could articulate and achieve their own desires and needs.” Yep!
As an aside, one of the saddest historical footnotes is that Marion Barry is known as a failed, greedy, lustful politician and not for the work that he did with SNCC.
Thinking about the end of SNCC made me think about the sustainability of the NAACP. My knee-jerk reaction to the ending of SNCC is usually guided by what poet, playwright, and activist Kalamu ya Salaam states in What Is Life?: “I eventually came to realize that organizations, like people, die.” Then, of course, there is Ms. Hogan’s insight that Forman was working to create a sustainable organization whereas Bob Moses was working to ensure that SNCC would not be needed in the future. For people who think that Moses was just some dreamer, I’m reminded of my Pops who worked for forty-two years as a juvenile youth court counselor. When he became the head counselor, he presented a plan to the youth court judge to improve the efficiency of the youth court, which would greatly reduce the recidivism rate. After reading my Pops’ plan, the judge, a black judge mind you, said, “Mac, what you are trying to implement will end the need of the youth court if all of this is successful.” To which, my Pops replied, “Isn’t that the point; to reduce juvenile crime by creating better homes, schools, and communities?” Unfortunately, the judge replied, “We’re just trying to deal with these children one problem at a time.” So, the question remains: are people like Moses and my Pops just dreamers, or is it that the vast majority of the population have no vision for what it takes to construct a better world? At any rate, Hogan is right that the blame for the implosion of SNCC cannot be tied to one person or one faction of the organization.
Again, thanks for sharing Ms. Hogan’s work, which should be read by anyone desiring to create any socio-political group of any kind.
DeMott: Your point (amped up by Salaam) does speak to an Inevitable that probably undercuts the sense of drama in Hogan’s book. Still, I do think that clarity about Forman’s way of party-ing is really useful. There are plenty of “progressives” who are locked on the vanguardist approach…A personal aside: My late brother gave about 30 years of his life to tenant organizing…(Had some heavy wins, kept our block in West Harlem from being gentrified for decades…Three buildings on rent strike for decades and decades…) Along the way he had a complicated relationship with a black woman comrade who grew up in Mississippi in the 60s. (Her white husband—a daring tenant organizer himself—was actually murdered by a landlord in league with drug dealers in another part of New York)…My brother and this woman fell out and reconciled many times…She had plenty of reasons to be bitter but at some point I realized—with help from Hogan’s book—she was a Formanite! Her mode was always to cultivate factions and power-monger…She just assumed that’s what serious politics came down to…My brother’s style of organizing was more like that of Sherrod/Moses—or your Dad! He and that Mississippi Sister were kind of doomed from the start…Still, she spoke at my brother’s funeral…Sorry if T.M.I.
PS YES to Marion Barry…He was deeply good in the 60s…But it was just too much to go through. Think of what happened to James Bevel! That cat was a wonder and he ended up gone before he split!
McInnes: Thanks for sharing your insight about your brother and his sister comrade. The story that you tell is all too common. I’ve been associated with grassroots organizations since the late 90s, especially Southern Echo, which was started by two former SNCC members and a third, younger, local Mississippi activist. While Echo was most successful in its work over thirty years and is still in existence, the three founders have retired and do not speak to each other. This is especially sad for me since I love each of them like uncles. All three are good men, but, as Hogan’s work and your brother’s experience indicates, ideological differences can destroy relationships and organizations. I used to give two lectures, one on institutional racism and one on the similarity between The Fire Next Time and Between the World and Me, under the aegis of Mississippi Black Leadership Institute (MBLI), which is a nine-month class conducted by the Mississippi NAACP that educates young African Americans (25 – 35) on organizing and how to use elected offices to shift the power dynamic. (Now, I only give the book lecture.) When I would give the talk on institutional racism, I would remind the students that “there are only a few people who will answer the call to do this type of work and not all of them will be ‘nice.’ Moreover, some of them will be jerks, but y’all must find a way to work with the jerks and navigate all types of personalities because, again, only a few of y’all will answer the call to do this type of work.” Returning to Salaam and to your brother’s life-long experience, I think that I’ve learned to be thankful for the folks who do the work, not to be too fast to criticize someone, especially if I know that they are actually doing work, and to try to ask myself what more can I do before I ask what more can others do. I’m not always successful but, as I tell the students, if I keep working at it, I’ll be better today than I was yesterday. And, that’s all that we can ask of ourselves and our movement for a better world.
PS Yes, James Bevel is another sad case of human implosion.
Addendum:
Eight Reasons Why the NAACP Has Prevailed so Long
For many years before the 1950s and many years after the 1970s, they were perceived as the only game or organization in town. (Excellent branding.)
They are responsible for landmark legal and legislative victories and continue to involve themselves in current legal and legislative battles over voting, education, and economic empowerment.
They positioned themselves as the alternative to what white America perceived as militant and scary black people/organizations. A Civil Rights organization and not a Black Power organization, per se, it is seen as non-threatening to the majority of white Americans since it is primarily concerned with petitioning to be included in the American empire and not working to dismantle that empire.
They entrenched themselves in the black middle-class, which gives them a solid financial base even as that makes them more pliant to white corporations, which also improves their finances.
They use the black church as a base and feeder system, which creates a certain type of order as well as willingness to follow a centralized command, reducing internal dissent. To be clear, local branches of the NAACP can be very petty, but a strong centralized power makes it easy to resolve conflicts.
Quiet as it is kept, the local branches have some amount of autonomy in regards to local issues, as long as those local stances don’t contradict the national position on a particular issue. But, in most regards, the national office has a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” relationship with the local branches. Moreover, if the local branch hits a homerun with a local stance that has national implications, then the national office can “swoop in” and take the credit. And, if the local branch fails miserably or creates unwanted national controversy, the national office can claim ignorance.
The establishment and maintenance of youth chapters perpetuate a feeder system to groom members and leaders.
Because it has a strong centralized governing body with a top-down agenda, there is never any major confusion of the mission of the organization, even though local branches have some autonomy on how they implement or execute that mission with the annual conference being used to reaffirm that mission while allowing local branches to feel they help shape the national agenda.