[Music] we stood for more democratic society non-violent organizers we stood for the right of people to be human aggressive justice let the people decide the letters sncc stands for the student nonviolent coordinating committee commonly called snick for its initials snick was founded in april 1960 to serve as an effort to bring together all the young people who have been participating in sit-ins across the south these students were southern students they were not going to live like their parents and their grandparents lived we accepted non-violence not simply as a technique as a tactic but as a way of life as a way of living if i'm in a picket line and someone comes up and strikes me i'm not going to strike him back if i'm marching down the street in a protest march and someone spits at me i'm not going to spit back at it people that were prepared and willing to go into hell's fire well my trouble is next job was to facilitate whatever these students needed if they went to jail it was to find a way to get them out of jail this next job was not to dictate to these communities what their movement was about the organization really just did the coordination to support all of these student activities that happened from nashville all through the carolinas into georgia i didn't want to go i was too afraid but it was like if i'm going around on campuses telling people that they should help in the south i don't do it what kind of hypocrite am i so i ended up there and developed a whole literacy project it was very hard almost impossible for people of color to register to vote you have to pass a so-called literacy test some people have been beaten shot and killed for attempting to register to vote so we were determined to do all we could to get people registered to vote in the [Music] south the student voice was a four page little eight by ten sheet four pages fastened together that we printed in our own offices in atlanta and distributed in the cities and towns mostly small rural towns where we're working i joined the student nonviolent coordinating committee in 1960 and my role was to be the communication director or sort of the publicist from being a part of the national movement i was already a member because the local group became part of snake before we even want to sit in we studied we prepared ourselves we studied the philosophy and the discipline and non-violence demonstration would be held at a restaurant or some public facility that was closed to black people we'd march in an orderly fashion occupy those seats waiting to be served and someone would come up and spit on you or put a lighted cigarette out in your hair maybe someone would walk up and pull you off the stool and start beating you every state agency could be utilized to enforce segregation with grave consequences it was like going into the belly of the beast in may of 1963 i became the third chair of the student nonviolent coordinating committee i was 23 years old and so on august 28 1963 10 of us were scheduled to speak i spoke number six dr king spoke number 10. the catholic archbishop of washington threatened not to give the invocation unless john lewis changed his speech he objected some of the language in john lewis's speech when i read it shocked me in a way because i thought gosh this is an angry john lewis and of course we were all angry the kennedy administration was worried that it made the united states look terrible and they didn't want that kind of criticism and finally only with the request of a phillip randolph the man who had really called this march into being john said later i couldn't say no to dr randolph and so he changed it [Music] to those who have said be patient and wait we must say that we cannot be patient we do not want our freedom gradually but we want to be free now there was so much hope so much optimism after the march on washington but a sense of hope that since the optimism was shattered 18 days later was a terrible bombing of a church in birmingham where full of girls was killed and while it didn't produce instant change and i don't think anybody expected that to happen the united states had never seen anything like this the student nonviolent coordinating committee got people to get together to march to protest to do all of the things that human beings need to do they want to improve their condition this group of determined brave and courageous young people gave everything that we had to make america better the snick in its philosophy of not trying to build one charismatic leader to lead some movement but actually to build leadership across the board in young women young men of all different colors classes and educational backgrounds i think that's nick's legacy