The SNCC's rise and fall coincided with the evolution of the black struggles of the 1960s. SNCC initially drew inspiration and ideas from the American tradition of religious radicalism. SNCC workers epitomized the militant mood of black people, particularly those in the most racially repressive regions of the Black Belt. SNCC "freedom fighters" acquired a singular mystique, based on their rebelliousness and their commitment to humanistic ideals.

Lafayette, Diane Nash, and CT Vivian walking at head of a march to Nashville courthouse, April 19, 1950.

On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, NC, where they had been denied service. This was the beginning of a wave of lunch counter sit-ins in college towns across the South. SNCC (pronounced "snick") was born out of this action. SNCC was thought of as the injection of "young blood" the movement needed.

The NAACP favored trial cases, and SCLC moved slowly because of the many ministerial denominations in the coalition. SNCC members, on the other hand, held faith in the power of the grassroots movement to effect social change.

Sit-in at lunch counter with white hecklers.

Over the next decade, SNCC members rode buses through the deep southern states where discrimination and segregation were most prominent. These so-called "Freedom Riders" were met at times by violent mobs that beat and injured many. However, the Freedom Riders refused to be deterred and their courageous actions brought media attention to the plight of black Americans in the Deep South. SNCC spearheaded right-to-vote campaigns as a critical move towards racial equality in the South.

In the fall of1963, they organized the Freedom Ballot in the state of Mississippi, where racial oppression was particularly severe. Joined by blacks and whites from the North, ministers and members went door-to-door in Mississippi, convincing black residents that they could control political power if they could only find the courage to vote. They succeeded - 80,000 black ballots were cast in the elections of 1964. Nevertheless, at the National Democratic Convention, Mississippi blacks were barred from seats as delegates. That action led to a bitterness and righteous anger that would play into the hands of those opposed to nonviolent strategies.

	James Lawson, retired United Methodist Minister, on how teaching the strategy of nonviolence was like teaching a foreign language