Introduction

The organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC - "Snick") were the front-line fighters in the Southern Freedom Movement in the decade of the sixties. Based primarily in rural towns throughout the nation's "Black Belt" south, these young women and men, most between the ages of 18 and 25, braved terrifying confrontations with white supremacist violence in their efforts to organize grassroots citizens, crack the walls of segregation and register African Americans to vote.