| Most studies of the social movements of the 1960s in the United States take the presence of a movement as something that can be traced simply through sequential events. Things occur and results materialize. This dissertation has a different purpose: to explore not so much what happened, but how it happened. How were people able to become activists, and then recruit others so as to sustain a voluntary social formation?; First, the southern-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, was the starter motor for every major trajectory taken within the subsequent New Left movement. People within the latter movement copied SNCC workers' attitude of acting “as if” they were full citizens. The example of SNCC's activity directly mobilized college students in the North and West to set up sympathy pickets to support the sit-ins. Initially in very small numbers, they began to come South to see SNCC in action. SNCC workers also began to travel outside of the South to draw publicity and funds through such newly formed groups as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Northern Student Movement. These contacts taught people in other regions of the country how to replicate SNCC's activity, culminating in the urban North in SDS's Economic Research and Action Projects. After 1964, these became significant, if flawed, outposts of movement culture.; Both SNCC and SDS had few models of democratic citizenship upon which to draw. Neither group was able to create an organizational form that reflected commonly-held values; as the struggle continued, people recognized they did not all share the same values. Indeed, they discovered they were not just struggling to dismantle segregation, they were contesting larger cultural traditions of white supremacy and authoritarian social habits. Throughout, the degree to which people were able to be candid with and respectful of one another was critical. It gradually proved impossible to maintain lines of internal communication that were both flexible and strong. Some turned toward more authoritarian organizational forms in order to lessen the anxiety provoked by the ongoing contingent nature of the struggle. These movements—experiments in creating voluntary, democratic forms for full citizenship—thereupon fell into disarray. |
