1999 - 2000 Broadcast Season
Broadcast Program Transcripts
Episode #1529
SNCC

Holloway: In 1960 the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was founded. This millennial year we commemorate its 40^th anniversary. We'll hear stories about the Movement from one of its founders and a local businessman and politician will talk about the controversial evolution next on Black Issues Forum. Stay tuned.

Voiceover: This program is made possible in part by contributions from UNC-TV viewers like you.

[THEME MUSIC]

Holloway: Good evening and welcome to tonight's issue of Black Issues Forum. I'm Jay Holloway your host and tonight we revisit a time and an event in history marked by courage and leadership of African American college students here in North Carolina. The 1960's Civil Rights era was a time most certainly of racial injustice and civil unrest. The event was the organizing of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, otherwise known as SNCC. It was born on the campus of Shaw University here in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1960 and we have one of those founders here in our studio tonight. I'd like to first welcome Reverend James Lawson who was at the 40^th anniversary celebration. He is a retired United Methodist pastor, he's from Los Angeles. He's the Chairman of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and taught non-violence across the country really since 1947. He was a southern secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation at the time of the movement and one was one of two keynote speakers at the first meeting 40 years ago of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He was the opening speaker and Dr. Martin Luther King was the closing speaker. Thank you for being with us.

Lawson: Thank you for having me.

Holloway: And last but not least a good friend and no stranger to North Carolina, Mr. John Winters was the first, I guess since disenfranchisement he would say and we would say too, the first city councilman in the city of Raleigh, our capital city. He was also the first black city councilman, I should say, the first black state senator in North Carolina, first black on the Utilities Commission in North Carolina and he is also still president and CEO of John Winters & Company located in Raleigh. Mr. Winters, thank you for being with us.

Winters: Thank you for having me.

Holloway: We're talking about a difficult time, but as Reverend David Forbes said at the conference in April, that this perhaps was a mind boggling thing, the student non-violent movement and this coordinating committee, that probably since the American Revolution was the most significant change without a shot even being fired. Reverend Lawson, do you want to comment on that?

Lawson: Yes, I think Reverend Forbes is quite correct. Many people called, in fact, the movements that took place between 1955 and about '75 the second American Revolution, so he was on good ground there. Certainly the South was severely segregated. Racism was the norm for the entire nation. It was a national economic institution as well as a social cultural institution, and within that context it was apartheid, so often, nationally as well as regionally. And the sit-in movement of 1960 was a direct challenge to it all, a challenge that was not simply local as was the Montgomery Bus Boycott a few years earlier. It was in many cities across the south and then gained support demonstrations in every state, wherever there were campuses and universities, students got involved with local communities in both supporting the sit-in campaign in the south, but also then asking the question of how must we move to make changes in the places where we go to school and where we work and live.

Holloway: Where many of us go to school and work and live, Mr. Winters, is here in North Carolina. And you feel that North Carolina was, and I guess still is, was a fertile ground for this kind of change. Why?

Winters: Because of its system of education. North Carolinians by and large believe in educating its people. I don't know another state except California that has 16 institutions of higher education for its people that is funded by tax money, state funds. The churches have institutions of higher education and the new system of community colleges, North Carolina has always believed in educating its people. Where you have education you have less fertility for [INAUDIBLE].

Holloway: So, this came about at a time when we were going through civil unrest and the tactics of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee were, of course, non-violent. But would you share, why were they really appropriate at that time to the goals of the movement.

Lawson: Well, I want to remind you, Jay, simply that Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is the name that was the result of the Raleigh Easter Weekend Conference, where over 175 of us converged for the whole weekend, and talked together and met each other and heard stories and felt, in fact, a great spirit of unanimity, that this was the time to act and that this was the time to act using non-violent idealism and non-violent methods. It was appropriate and it is still appropriate, because after all 99% of the American people, or maybe not 99% but at least 95% of the American people want to live with one another, we want to be neighbors and we want to have everyone have equality and the right to good work and healthcare and housing and all the rest of it. So, I think that is the wish of the average American if you prick them about the matter. So, if you're going to live together then you can't use methods of hate. That's just the bottom line of it. Because hate creates more hate. It is compassion and love which teaches respect and dignity and to treat the neighbor as you yourself want to be treated. So the non-violent method, historically and across human history, has been an idea and a method by which the practitioners respect their opponents or their enemies and will not heap abuse or violence on their opponents. And so when people talk about, as Trent Lott, the majority leader of the senate, has said and Jesse Helms from North Carolina that Martin Luther King was the most violent man in the world, everywhere he went violence. And well the system was violent. And so yes, everywhere he went white people, especially young white people with no idealism, would rebel. Law enforcement agencies would like to preserve the status quo, so the violence grew out of the racism which itself is a system of violence, which we do not want to understand. So the method was appropriate then and is still appropriate. We want a better community and a nobler community. We want more justice. We want more democracy. We want more economic opportunity for every boy and girl. We want more quality education for everyone. All of us, I think, agree about that. So, if you want that, then as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin King and as Jesus said: If you want a good end, you've got to use good means to create it. You can't have a good end using bad means. A good tree, Jesus said, will not produce good fruit.

[LAUGHTER]

Holloway: One of the things.you mentioned the terminology of neighbors and good neighbors. And Mr. Winters, you talked about our state being fertile ground. But the governor at that time, Terry Sanford.You called me when we ran the biographical conversation with Terry Sanford and you talked about the Good Neighbors Council. You were one of the first people on that. And North Carolina was fertile ground for that. But we talked about people of all colors wanting good relationships. Talk about the kind of fertile ground that North Carolina had under Terry Sanford in this state and even in the City of Raleigh.

Winters: Terry Sanford, he himself not only being governor but he was an educator in his own _____ and his own mind. But as a political leader, he understood better than almost anyone that hadn't been tutored by Dr. Frank Porter Graham, the benefits and advocacy of having education, as I've stated many, many times across this state. There aren't many states that have 16 institutions of higher education that are funded by the state itself. And in addition to that now we have established a system of community colleges buffered by the many institutions of higher education that are funded by various religions.

Holloway: So, was that a relationship between the governor doing this to the students, pushing this movement. I mean, is there a relationship?

Winters: No, no, no. The system of education was established long before that. But it was.The numbers of the various campuses as we had in our meeting with the focus of the program last night, North Carolina State University under John Caldwell, had a system set apart where it was conducive for discussion on his campus because he already knew he was free to express himself. And in environment of education people are more an advocate for fairness and utilization of what is considered to be born rights.

Lawson: I think it can also be said that the then Governor Sanford was probably the only governor in the entire United States that felt that there should be in state itself a good neighbor program and policy and wanted all the citizens to come together, sit around tables or sit in small groups or larger groups and actually come to talk to each other and recognize the extent to which they far more in common than we have differences. I mean, that idea, way back when, would still be a great idea for the United States as a whole. Because I still maintain that we the public are very frustrated with all kinds of things going on in our society. All sorts of decisions are nationally and globally in which we have had no participation and which don't represent our priorities. As an illustration, most Americans want quality education for every boy and girl, not just their own, in the United States. There are all kinds of things being said about education but we the people do not have a public conversation that could influence that discussion. You could name issue after issue. In presidential year 2000, they're talking about basic patient rights for HMOs and what not. But the American people are really talking about the weaknesses in our healthcare system as a whole. And most of us would prefer a comprehensive, universal healthcare system based around, maybe, Medicare, based around what Congress and most governors and state legislatures get from our tax dollar. We were way ahead of them and yet they're not hearing us nor are the HMOs hearing us at all. So, the Good Neighbor Council idea was a genius of an idea and only Terry Sanford.And I remember him well, though I never met him I remember him well from the '60s. Only Terry Sanford had the courage as well as the compassion, as well as the character to boldly try to lead his state in that direction. Any failures in that respect is a loss to the body politic and not any kind of discredit to Sanford.

Holloway: We're talking about the 40^th anniversary of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and students were really at the crux of this change. And why was Raleigh, North Carolina particularly Shaw University, this meeting you talked about, where we know that Shaw University was the location where the meeting occurred but St. Agustines was there, N.C. State you mentioned was working together. What made it really.Why was it really so effective, I guess, that it was started right then.

Lawson: I think the chief reason was that Ella Baker was the field secretary, the first field secretary for the Southern Christen Leadership Conference which Martin Luther King Jr. had founded. And with the, in a sense, explosion of the sit-in movement across the south and the country, she and Dr. King and a number of other people felt that there was a real need for the students to come together and talk. She is a graduate of Shaw, so she had continuing relationships in Raleigh and at Shaw. And so, in a sense, I suspect that she's the one that proposed and Shaw very quickly agreed that Shaw would be our meeting site. And I was in on the little steering committee that did some of the preliminary work and Douglas Moore, a campus minister at the time, was also in on it, and Dr. King. And so that decision was made then to come to Shaw. It was ideal site. As I recall, they were on Easter break. So you could have the invasion of some 180 or 200 people. And many people lived in dormitories others of us lived in homes in the area for the meeting. So I think that's how Shaw became the center point.

Holloway: And people came from all over the country. It wasn't just from North Carolina.

Lawson: [OVERLAPPING].was from primarily from I think, nine or ten states across the South was the bulk of us. Then there were a handful of representatives from different parts of the north.

Holloway: Mr. Winters, at that time, this came about as a result of the sit-ins in Greensboro. And the students here in Raleigh said well let's try to broaden this thing. One of the things that we did here in North Carolina that you played a role in as city councilman, the first black city councilman, is we chose in Raleigh and in North Carolina not to handle the student protest like was done in Montgomery. Explain that in terms of police and law enforcement.

Winters: Well, the city council took a position to having or needing a room full of businessmen and the city manager and the mayor to get their input on the demonstrations whether it was adversely effecting their business, whether they wanted to try to curb. And of course, we had to remind them the student forces were coming from someone ethnically different from the majority that was in that room, because I happened to be the only African-American in the room at that particular time. And I reminded them that if these were children that had come out their loins, out there demonstrating, they could better understand what these students were talking about, and that I could articulate for them the need for them to have freedom to express themselves without violence. And out of the meeting, having reminded them who these children were and who they were, we had a discussion about the rights of nonviolent movements taking place in our city. And we decided that instead of waiting for something to happen, that we instructed our police chief at that time Tom Davis to form squadrons of police that escorted the demonstrators throughout the city. And as Reverend Forbes reminded us last night, he remembered that taking place. But we did that at this forum, the business leaders were there. And instead of having what happened in Alabama with Bull Connor, we had police escorts to wade off people that wanted to interfere with the demonstrators as they marched and sang, and escorted them without any material damage being done, humanly or to businesses during the entire demonstration period by the students on an ongoing basis. They, almost every night for the period was going.Dr. Lawson probably understands better how continuous the students were at that time.

Holloway: Let's talk.Later on SNCC did not always stay under the same leadership but Stokley Carmichael got involved. Did the mission change, Reverend Lawson?

Lawson: Well, you know, a movement always evolves. A lot of folks do not understand that. And SNCC organized itself in such a fashion that the chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee would not always remain the same. It wouldn't be someone who came on in 1960 and stay until 1970. They would have an election periodically, six months, a year, and could elect other chairs. And they would rotate chairs rather systematically because there is a well spring of good names who became chair of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at one time or another. Well, by about 1966, there was a great deal of frustration on the part of the young people who were working in some of tough counties like Lownds County, Alabama or in McComb in Mississippi. These were hard-nose, racist, segregationist counties. And they were met with great brutality, great harassment. They were always in danger, whether they were at home by themselves sleeping or whether they were in demonstrations or whether they were simply in meetings instructing people how to register to vote, because black folk generally across the South were prohibited from voting we sometimes forget that in the year 2000. So, Stokley was in fact the chief voice that said that when I'm hit I must hit back. If I am threatened with weapon, I will have a weapon.

Holloway: That was a major change wasn't it?

Lawson: No, I do not think it was a major change. I think it rather was a part of the kind of natural discussion in a country where violence is romanced. It was a part of the natural discussion of young Americans who had been born and raised and so forth in this ethos. It was a discussion that the movement had to be able to use for itself. But what happened was, of course, that the press jumped on it. And it became the national news and, I will say also, that some folk who consider themselves liberal and revolutionary jumped on it and pretended it was something other than a natural stage for the movement to rebate its own purposes and methods. Had it not been, in fact, for the assignation of Martin King, April 4, 1968, we would have maintained that discussion. And the discussion, I believe, would have been, in fact, that the movement of the 60s had brought the greatest amount of change to both people and the country. And we should, then, continue those methods. I know that a lot of young people think, well that method was so slow. But they have to understand something. Violence and nonviolence are very similar. They both take planning and strategy and discipline and training. There's no violent revolution in the United States as long as you have very much of a national security and police state. If you could beat the local police in Raleigh, if you had weapons enough and people enough to beat the local police, then you'd have to face the State Highway Patrol. If you could beat the State Highway Patrol, you've got to face the National Guard. If you face the National Guard, then you have to face the Pentagon. So it's nonsense for people to come out of the bowels of American history rapping over violence.

Holloway: We just have a few minutes left. Let's talk about coming out of that history into today now. What are the differences you gentleman see in the black and white students of the 60s and today in the new millennium?

Lawson: Mr. Winters can we start off with you?

Winters: Well, there's a complete difference, simply because there is more understanding. People talking to people, people getting together and going about getting their education together cannot have the ignorance that we had before this was a fact in education. I would think that students today have a commonality of problems that are common to both sides, not racially motivated but because of common goals. And for some reason, Jay, I'm getting.

Holloway: Well, you're doing well at 80. I hope I'm as well as you are when I'm 80, Mr. Winters. Reverend Lawson do you want to add to that?

Lawson: I think that students of the 60s and students today have a lot of similarities. I think that students today are still afraid of one another. We haven't really dealt with issues of institutions of racism and sexism. So, students still have real problems of talking to each other and being able and willing to break across creed and color and gender and the rest of it. Students today also are far more materialistic. They have more, so they're more comfortable in what they have and they take it much more for granted. But the third thing I would say is that I find a great deal of idealism in many student campuses that I have visited, even still this year, already this year. And I would suggest to you that there is among students at the same moment that we are not yet what we ought to be and the nation has not yet fulfilled its promise to us or to our own future families and children. So I see the possibility, in the year 2000, in the decade of 2000.I see already the seeds of another movement. Students, for example, are very concerned about the sweat shops. They're buying clothing from their universities and they've learned, and are learning everywhere that those clothes, those beautiful t-shirts and running togs and everything else, are being made by ordinary people in Los Angeles and Mexico and Costa Rica for.indentured servants are what those workers are.

Winters: And by the same token, this would not be racially motivated. It's a commonality.

Lawson: Yeah, economic justice is a critical issue for people.

Winters: No two ways about it.

Lawson: It affects all of us.

Holloway: I certainly appreciate.We've run completely out of time. And we know they've been talking about that in our state, particularly at UNC and Duke. But we want to thank you all for being with us and giving that challenge in our new millennium now.

Lawson: Thank you so much for having us, Jay.

Holloway: Thank you, both.

Winters: Thank you.

Holloway: We've been talking with Reverend James Lawson and John Winters, both active in the 1960s civil rights movement, both continuing in their own way to forward the cause for racial justice in America. I'd like to thank you for joining us on this discussion and thank you for watching, to our viewers. And if you'd like more information, a transcript, more information on SNCC or tonight's program, we'd like to send that information to you or send us your comments. Visit us at the information on your screen, the Website: www.unctv.org or contact us via telephone (919)549-7167. We'll talk with you next Friday night at 11o'clock right here on UNC-TV for another edition of Black Issues Forum. I'm Jay Holloway. You have a blessed evening and a good night.