SNCC: The New Abolitionists

Howard Zinn tells the story of one of the most important political groups in American history. SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It is considered an indispensable study of the organization, of the 1960s, and of the process of social change. Includes a new introduction by the author.
"In the years 1956 to 1963, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, teaching at Spelman College, a college for African-American women. I became involved, along with my students, in the movement against racial segregation that built up slowly to 1960 and then exploded throughout the South with sit-ins, Freedom Rides, mass demonstrations. When student veterans of the sit-ins formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), they asked me to become a member of their Executive Board. I became both a participant and a chronicler of activities in Atlanta and other cities. When Beacon Press in Boston asked me to write a book on the role of the NAACP, I suggested that instead I would write about the young people in SNCC, who were the leading edge of the movement in the deep South. The result was not a comprehensive scholarly book on SNCC, but a work of on-the-spot reportage, based on time spent in southwest Georgia, Selma, Alabama, Hattiesburg, and Mississippi, and in the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi."