Arsnick: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas

19. “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee”

19. “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee” Nat Griswold was the first director of the Arkansas Council on Human Relations, which was founded in 1954. The organization had ties to the Southern Regional Council and supported efforts to desegregate public schools and accommodations in Arkansas. The national SNCC office sent organizer Bill Hansen to Arkansas in 1962 at the behest of the ACHR. In this excerpt from his unpublished autobiography, Griswold recalls Hansen’s arrival in Arkansas and gives his brief assessment of the group’s activities in the state. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee The Arkansas Project of SNCC was not firmly established until October, 1962. As early as March, 1960, students at Philander Smith College, stimulated by the news of the sit-ins and encouraged by the NAACP, sat in at lunch counters on Main Street. Sit-ins were resumed in November of the same year, led by dedicated and courageous students. Officially, Little Rock gave them rough treatment—quick arrests, stiffest court penalties possible under Arkansas laws, delays in final court adjudication . . . Nevertheless, these students were harbingers of things to come. They aroused firm support from most adult Negroes and understanding sympathy from liberal white groups. Facetiously these students called themselves , “Arsnick.” In October of 1962, Bill Hansen came from the regional office of SNCC to organize the Arkansas Project. Bill and the project functioned 179 Source: From Nat Griswold, “The Second Reconstruction in Little Rock,” 1968; Book II, Chapter VI, “The Role of Negro Arkansas,” and Book III, Chapter I, “Arkansas SNCC and Carmichael’s Black Power” characteristically through 1965. The “Black Power” policies instituted by Stokely Carmichael ended the Arkansas Project in 1966. The role of SNCC in Arkansas was similar to that played elsewhere. Direct action on the main streets was the fuse that started stalling business leaders to make changes. This brash confrontation with the obvious points of injustice opened the way for helpful action by the liberal organizations of Negroes and whites. White liberals in the larger towns and at universities gave moral support and enlightened public interpretations. Small groups of college and church young people sponsored SNCC speakers and quietly participated in a few projects, most of which were out of the state . . . Bill Hansen . . . reached Little Rock from the Atlanta Office of SNCC on October 24, 1962. Tall, lean, with a nervous bounce in his walk, Bill consumed fabulous quantities of food and sleep on the infrequent occasions either was available. He came to the South from Xavier University, Cincinnati, on a “freedom ride” in 1961. Previously, non-violence became an article of his faith through observations and personal experiences with organized labor. He stayed in the South and endured the punishment reserved by racists for “white Negroes,” including a broken jaw in prison. With Hansen’s guidance and that of his successors, Arkansas SNCC experienced significant achievements and frustrating failures. In Little Rock, students of Philander Smith College, organized by Hansen and Worth Long, a student, began sit-ins at lunch counters downtown on November 7, 1962. Organized businessmen who had done their homework in advance asked for terms from the students on November 9. A “Negotiating Committee” was agreed upon. It functioned as the agency for change for many months. Downtown restaurants, hotels, theaters, and restrooms were opened to all. Most first-rate cafes, cafeterias, and laundromats throughout the city were desegregated. The committee remained largely anonymous. Meantime, Pine Bluff became the center for activities of SNCC. With assists from business and human relations leaders of Little Rock an interracial negotiation committee was formed there. College and high school students, rather solidly supported by Negro adults, repeated the success of Little Rock. With rallies at Allen Temple Methodist Church, street marches and sit-ins unchecked by violence and mass arrests, and songs in jail loud enough to attract Dick Gregory to the scene, the students operated from “Freedom House,” through which flowed the usual procession of Negro and white volunteers. From Pine Bluff as a center, Snickers 180 “THE STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE” touched down at many points in east and south Arkansas with varying degrees of tribulations and achievements . . . SNCC came to the South and Arkansas with a refreshingly simple creed, “Freedom, freedom, freedom, now.” To these students “freedom” was a clear, concise concept: free participation in all aspects of the common life. They were not hard to understand. Their message carried across the nation...