RALEIGH -- Their hair gray but their hearts strong, more than 800 organizers and supporters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating mission converged on Raleigh for their 50th anniversary conference Thursday, a three-day event.
Born at Shaw University, SNCC played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement, organizing voter registration drives across the South, participating in sit-ins and freedom rides, enduring beatings and arrests for their protests.
Often called the movements "shock troops," SNCC stood out for its grass-roots style, acting by majority rule rather than through a hierarchy. Its members were mostly college-aged, and because many women held leading roles, it is said that SNCC helped fuel the feminist movement as well as prop up the lives of black southerners.
"Many went to jail," said Chuck McDew, SNCC chairman from 1960 to 1963. "Many suffered. Many suffered brutalization at the hands of the law. ... While America is a different place because of SNCC, and many who have sacrificed over the years, the struggle continues."
The purpose of the conference is not to reminisce, or to self-congratulate, said SNCC member Timothy Jenkins before a crowd of 300 at Fletcher Hall in the Progress Energy Performing Arts Center. The goal instead is to fill in SNCC's missing chapters.
"We must be at pain to tell our story to the me generation," he said, "to the bling generation ... so they know there's something more rewarding than wealth, more important that volume, and it has to do with morals.
The conference continues through Saturday at Shaw and includes speeches by singer and activist Harry Belafonte and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
