With deep admiration and rigorous scholarship, historian Lewis (Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table
) revisits the “ragtag band” of young men and women who formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Impatient with what they considered the overly cautious and accommodating pace of the NAACP and Martin Luther King Jr., the black college students and their white allies, inspired by Gandhi's principles of nonviolence and moral integrity, risked their lives to challenge a deeply entrenched system. Fanning out over the Jim Crow South, SNCC organized sit-ins, voter registration drives, Freedom Schools and protest marches. Despite early successes, the movement disintegrated in the late 1960s, succeeded by the militant “Black Power” movement. The highly readable history follows the later careers of the principal leaders. Some, like Stokely Carmichael and H. “Rap” Brown, became bitter and disillusioned. Others, including Marion Barry, Julian Bond and John Lewis, tempered their idealism and moved from protest to politics, assuming positions of leadership within the very institutions they had challenged. According to the author, “No organization contributed more to the civil rights movement than SNCC,” and with his eloquent book, he offers a deserved tribute. (Nov.)
