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~ 15 ~ The Journey Home Let’s not forget that these students are going to jail not only for their freedom, but for yours and mine; not only because they have been hurt by the indignities of segregation, but because we all have been hurt. As I watch them, as I see the movement spread from college to college and city to city, I am deeply stirred as are millions of other Americans. What is it we feel? What do we hope for? I can answer only for myself; For me it is as if the no exit sign is about to come down from our age. It is the beginning of new things. Of a new kind of leadership. If the white students will join in ever-increasing numbers with these Negro students, change will come; their experience of suffering and working together for what they know is right, the self-discipline, the refusal to act in violence or think in violence will bring a new spiritual life not only to our region but to our entire country. —lillian smith, “only the young and the brave,” old screamer mountain, clayton, georgia, early 1960s I f the Lincoln Hotel was our haven, such as it was, from the constant perils of Baton Rouge, and if Reverend Cox was our mentor and spiritual guide in facing those perils, then CORE certainly was our link to the rest of the world. Baton Rouge could become very insular; it was easy to become cut off because of its resistance to the changes happening elsewhere. Ever since Dave Dennis arrived at Southern and started drumming up interest in another sit-in, CORE provided our movement with vital financial support, guidance from the headquarters in New York, and a much-needed link with people from other areas of the nation. CORE was founded in the 1940s and was the first organization to conduct mass demonstrations against segregation. For over two decades, it had been the only outlet for political, action-oriented blacks. The other national black groups, the NAACP, headed by Roy Wilkins, and the National Urban the journey home 137 League, headed by Whitney Young, were reluctant to embrace activism as a way to promote change. These groups were more inclined to encourage quiet infiltration, social service, and self-help over agitation. Therefore, CORE— based largely in the Northeast and backed largely by white donations—was for years the legitimate, national protest-oriented organization. Then, in the early 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed as a branch of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Under the spiritual guidance of Ella Baker, a dynamic black woman who had old-line ties to radical movements in the past, a contagious, youthful enthusiasm, and a belief in protest today, the younger, more aggressive, and less compromising members of SCLC formed SNCC. Their goal was to become the battering ram of national civil rights protest. SNCC members were willing to sit in, to march, to take the beatings and abuse, and to do whatever it took to be heard. In attracting Julian Bond, John Lewis, Jim Forman, Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, Marion Barry, and countless other leaders like them, SNCC eventually did become the torchbearer for the movement. A SNCC pamphlet from the mid-1960s titled Rebels with a Cause explained: The SNCC rebels are intense, nervous people who know the insides of many jails, people who have seen the bottomless cruelty of man, people who have seen their best friends beaten to a pulp and killed, people who have been tested, who have looked on death and despair a long lonely time. . . . What sustains these rebels is a mystique of total commitment. SNCC workers take vows of total commitment. SNCC workers take vows of total poverty and total devotion. They identify themselves totally with the people—i.e. the poor, the despised, the downtrodden, the humiliated. But when we were embroiled in our protest in Baton Rouge in 1962, CORE, led by James Farmer, was just as progressive as SNCC, and at the same time more well-known, financially stable, and national. They sent Dave to us first, so we became identified with CORE. Our protest was a “CORE protest.” Many in our group paid membership fees and became strong advocates and supporters. Ronnie, Weldon, and Pat, who would all three endure almost a year of court battles, were chairman, vice chairman, and secretary of the local chapter, which further strengthened our CORE...

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