The Atlanta Conference

The staff conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ended just one week ago in Atlanta, Georgia. At this meeting, which lasted seven days, roughly 250 SNCC field workers discussed and debated the problems which face the civil rights movement in the South. And when the discussion was over, SNCC announced that it would not recruit volunteers for a Mississippi Project as it did last summer.

It took more than seven days of marathon bull-sessions to arrive at the Atlanta decision. Ever since the student movement began with the 1960 sit-ins, the field workers of SNCC, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and innumerable local groups have been evaluating and re-evaluating their work. Their goal is destroying the power of an anti-democratic, segregated South and reconstituting this power in the hands of those whom it now oppresses: Negroes and poor whites. Specifically this means integrating the lunch counters, the schools, the ballot box, and the labor market. But there has never been unanimous agreement, either within the movement or within any particular organization, on the tactics that should be used.

I

Almost a year ago, on Easter weekend of 1964, SNCC held its spring conference in Atlanta. There were less than a hundred staff members than, and they gathered to plan what was known as the Mississippi Project. (Although the Project was officially run by the Council of Federated Organizations, SNCC provided at least 80 per cent of the funds and manpower.)

It had taken SNCC a long time to decide that a summer project was needed, and even longer to agree that it would work. Some had felt that white northern students could not relate to the Southern Negro community and carry out the complex work of voter registration. Others had felt that a massive influx of civil-rights workers into Mississippi could only result in murderous reprisals from an inflamed white community. But on Easter Sunday, 1964, SNCC members began leaving for their projects in the Black Belt, carrying with them the preparatory plans for the Summer Project.

Voting was the central focus of the Project. Programs for freedom schools and community centers, while they had special purposes of their own, were all aimed at helping to win the vote for the Negro. Nearly half of the 800 volunteers who went into Mississippi in the summer of 1964 were "voter-registration workers." It was their duty to get thousands of Negroes to court houses all over the state to take the voter-registration test and to organize thousands more into a new political body, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

If the immediate registration of Mississippi Negro voters was the sole purpose of the summer's work, then the Project was a miserable failure. Only about 1100 Negroe were added to the voting rolls during the summer; and over half of that number came from Panola County alone, where a federal court order had abolished the registration test. At this rate, it would take four centuries to register all of Mississippi's Negroes.

But the real effect of the Project is that it changed the attitudes of Negro and white Mississippians, of people across the nation, and of the federal government. Perhaps the most important change of all is the new feeling of courage, hope, and confidence that is now possessed by thousands of Negroes in Mississippi.

The formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was a revolution in itself. For the first time since Reconstruction, Negroes participated in political discussions, political rallies, and political decisions. By the summer's end, 70,000 Negroes had joined the MFDP, even though the mere act of joining often brought danger and harassment. In MFDP precinct meetings, county conventions, and district caucuses, sharecroppers and city laborers stood up and said what they felt.

Even the white Mississippian has noticed the change. He is aware of a new mood in the Negro community, and in a sense has adjusted to the presence of civil-rights workers. Before the summer apprehension gripped many white Mississippians; newspapers printed letters about the legions of Northern "Communists" who were massing to start a violent Negro uprising, complete with the rape of Southern womanhood. When the Red hordes failed to materialize, the fear created by ignorance was soon dissipated. And as the fear and uncertainty of the white Mississippian diminished, so did his inclination towards violence.

A year ago, veterans of the civil-rights movement regarded Mississippi as a stone wall. Demonstrations could be held and victories won in every other state of the South, but the situation in Mississippi was summed up in one of the movement's songs:

The white folk down in Mississippi

Will knock you on your rump,

And if you holler "Freedom,"

You'll wind up in the swamp.

The stone wall has been shattered by the Summer Project, and demonstrations, tests of public facilities, and other such tactics are coming into use across the state.

To the nation, the Project publicized the plight of the South. Americans became aware that the Southern Negro wanted to vote and was not being allowed to do so. The murder of three civil-rights workers shocked the country, and people began to understand the nature of the oppression that was being practiced within their national borders.

The first direct response came from the federal government. The Justice Department brought more suits against voting registrars in different counties, and a general suit against all 82--U.S. v. Mississippi--was recently argued before the Supreme Court. There is a fair chance that the court may soon rule on this case and perhaps strike down the registration test that is used to keep Negroes from voting. Thus while the Project itself did not register all potential Negro voters, it set in motion the local and national machinery which may eventually do this.

The federal government was not the only national voice to speak out against Mississippi's racism. Industries and individuals are refusing to purchase Mississippi products and business firms are cancelling plans to expand in that state. The president of Cleveland's Work Wear Corporation put it bluntly, "We won't consider expanding in Mississippi until the state and its people join the Union again." Dollars spent on new plants in Mississippi fell by 28 per cent last year, and tourism has declined drastically, a major blow to the resort areas of the Gulf Coast.

Already, this economic pressure has brought some change in the state. Just three weeks ago a council of over 100 Mississippi businessmen announced that they would comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and urged others to do so because "it is the law of the land."

II

The work of the summer culminated in the MFDP challenge at the Democratic National Convention, after which most of the volunteers went home. About 250 workers remained in the state to continue the 30-odd local projects that were initiated last June.

"Freedom elections" were held from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, forming the basis of a congressional challenge in January. And in eight Mississippi counties, Negroes ran in the December elections for county Agricultural Stabilization and Control Boards; by winning some of these, they gained a voice in the control of cotton allotments--a gain of major economic importance.

Despite these new efforts, some project areas have suffered a severe decline in activity, while others have merely consolidated the gains of the summer without advancing significantly. The slowing of activity was not unexpected, and stems partly from the decline in the number of field workers, the cessation of national publicity, a lack of funds, and a need to recuperate from the summer's feverish pace.

But the fall and winter have also revealed some basic weaknesses of the Project and raised questions about future plans. The problems fall into two catagories:

* The Vote--Despite all the efforts of the summer, Mississippi Negroes still cannot vote. How can this be changed?

* Decision-making--One of the basic philosophies of SNCC, and therefore COFO, is that local people must become the leaders of civil-rights activity. Since the SNCC worker cannot stay forever, local people must learn to make the decisions, avoid the mistakes, and continue the work that something like the Summer Project might initiate. In practice, however, this idea has received more lip-service than implementation, in some areas of Mississippi. And so the Atlanta Conference, held last week, was faced with the question: Who had been making the decisions in Mississippi and who should make them?

III

The meeting in Atlanta answered these two questions. It only answered them partially, and in some respects did not answer them well; but its answers are basically sound.

The question of decision-making was answered by a call for "people's conferences." If the local people are to begin making decisions, then the first decision they should make is what sort of summer project, if any, they want. Therefore SNCC will assume the responsibility of organizing conferences of local leaders in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, to be held during the next two months.

As its reply to the question of voter registration, SNCC declared: "The congressional challenge is the most important political event in 1965." By emphasizing the need for new, federally controlled elections in Mississippi, SNCC admitted that only the national government is powerful enough to solve the voting problem. Between now and July, SNCC plans to mobilize national support for ousting Mississippi's five regular congressmen, and to send 2,000 students to Washington in late June to lobby for the challenge.

In practical terms, the decisions in Atlanta are full of dangers. Since there will be some form of summer project in at least four Southern states, it is unfortunate that detailed plans will not be made until May and June--after the people's conferences. And if the conferences don't issue a call for volunteers until April, it may be too late to attract enough of them, especially skilled people like lawyers, doctors, and ministers. (Some of the Washington lobbyists, however, will probably be sent South after the challenge.) Futhermore, it may prove impossible for the conferences to implement the giant training and security program that protected last summer's volunteers.

But basically the answers from Atlanta are correct. They represent a rededication to ideals that have always had a place in the civil-rights movement. For students thinking of going South for the summer, the answers pose a challenge: to decide whether they are motivated by the romantic appeal of working in Mississippi or by a real desire to change the Southern political structure. For Southern Negroes, the answers given in Atlanta offer the best hope of meaningful and permanent power.