Editing Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (section)

==1969–1970: Dissolution==
{| style="font-size: 90%; border: 1px solid #a2a9b1; padding:0.2em; color: black; background-color: #f8f9fa; float:right;" 
|+ style="font-size: 1.25em;" |'''Chairmen of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee'''
|-
| [[Marion Barry]]
| 1960–61
|-
| [[Charles McDew|Charles F. McDew]]
| 1961–63
|-
| [[John Lewis]]
| 1963–66
|-
| [[Stokely Carmichael]]
| 1966–67
|-
| [[H. Rap Brown]] 
| 1967–68
|-
| Phil Hutchings 
| 1968–69
|-
|}
Ella Baker said that "SNCC came North at a time when the North was in a ferment that led to various interpretations on what was needed to be done. With its own frustrations, it could not take the pace-setter role it took in the South."<ref>C. Gerald Fraser, [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19681008&id=WNhVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=H-EDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6905,1709713 "SNCC Has Lost Much of Its Power to Black Panthers"], ''New York Times'' news service (''Eugene Register-Guard''), October 9, 1968.</ref>

These "frustrations" may in part have been fed by undercover agents. Like other potentially "subversive" groups, SNCC had become a target of the Counterintelligence Program ([[COINTELPRO]]) of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI).<ref name="mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu">[https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/student-nonviolent-coordinating-committee-sncc "Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee"], ''King Encyclopedia'', Martin Luther King Jr Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.</ref><ref>[https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/federal-bureau-investigation-fbi "Federal Bureau of Investigation"], ''King Encyclopedia'', Martin Luther King Jr Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tyson |first=Pearline Marie |date=2010 |title=Fbi Paranoia: The Fbi's War Against Core & Sncc, 1956-1971 |url=https://mdsoar.org/handle/11603/10604 |language=en |doi=10.13016/M2XK84T29 |website=Maryland Shared Open Access Repository |access-date=July 23, 2024}}</ref> FBI Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s general COINTELPRO directive was for agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities and leadership of the movements they infiltrated.<ref name="WRH">{{cite web |url=http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/COINTELPRO-FBI.docs.html |title=COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption – In Black & White: The F.B.I. Papers |website=What Really Happened |access-date=2008-06-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516220059/http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/COINTELPRO-FBI.docs.html |archive-date=2008-05-16 |url-status=live }}</ref>

By the beginning of 1970, surveillance had everywhere effectively ceased for lack of SNCC activity—save in New York City from where the last FBI report was filed in December 1973.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.roosevelt.nl/sites/zl-roosevelt/files/fbi_file_on_sncc.pdf|title=Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the FBI File on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). A Microfilm Publication by SR: Scholarly Resources Inc. Wilmington. Accessed January 05, 2020|accessdate=Apr 2, 2023|archive-date=January 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125114436/https://www.roosevelt.nl/sites/zl-roosevelt/files/fbi_file_on_sncc.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=FBI File on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee |url=https://library.truman.edu/microforms/fbi_file_SNCC.asp |access-date=2022-05-16 |website=library.truman.edu |archive-date=2015-09-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150918221401/http://library.truman.edu/microforms/fbi_file_SNCC.asp |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Experienced organizers and staff had moved on. For many the years of "hard work at irregular, subsistence-level pay, in an atmosphere of constant tension" had been as much as they could bear.<ref name="what we did" /> Some went over to the Black Panthers. Others were to follow Forman into the Black Economic Development Council (whose key demand was [[Reparations for slavery debate in the United States|reparations]] for the nation's history of racial exploitation).<ref name="Christopher M. Richardson 2014 p. 181"/> A greater loss had been to the Democrats (it was after merging with the Alabama Democratic Party in 1970 that LCFO candidates began winning public offices, Hulett becoming county Sheriff)<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1781|title=Lowndes County Freedom Organization|website=Encyclopedia of Alabama|language=en|access-date=August 3, 2020}}</ref> and to [[Lyndon Johnson]]'s [[War on Poverty]]. [[Charles E. Cobb Jr.|Charlie Cobb]] recalls:<ref>Rakim Brooks and Charles E. Cobb Jr.[http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/black-politics-and-the-establishment-an-interview-with-charles-e-cobb-jr "Black Politics and the Establishment"], ''Dissent: A Quarterly of Politics and Culture'', February 15, 2012.</ref> <blockquote>After we got the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|Civil Rights Act in 1964]] and [[Voting Rights Act of 1965|Voting Rights Act in 1965]], a lot of groups that we had cultivated were absorbed into the Democratic Party ... a lot more money came into the states we were working in. A lot of the people we were working with became a part of [[Head Start program|Head Start]] and various kinds of poverty programs. We were too young to really know how to respond effectively. How could we tell poor [[sharecropper]]s or maids making a few dollars a day to walk away from poverty program salaries or stipends?</blockquote>

As their numbers diminished, SNCC veteran [[Clayborne Carson]] found staff cultivating the skills for "organizational infighting" rather than "those that had enabled SNCC to inspire thousands of people outside the group during its years of greatest influence." Attempting to gain the trust of beleaguered communities, "develop indigenous leadership, and build strong local institutions," was no longer regarded as sufficiently "revolutionary".<ref>Clayborne Carson (1995). ''In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s''. Harvard University Press. p. 287</ref>

The judgement of [[Charles McDew]], SNCC's second chairman (1961–1963), is that the organization was not designed to last beyond its mission of winning civil rights for blacks, and that at the founding meetings most participants expected it to last no more than five years:<ref>Kwame Ture and Michael Thelwell, [https://books.google.com/books?id=LpW9QV0MKC4C&q=First%2C_we_felt_if_we_go_more_than_five_years&pg=PA298 ''Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael''], Scribner, 2003, p. 297–298.</ref> 
<blockquote>First, we felt if we go more than five years without the understanding that the organization would be disbanded, we run the risk of becoming institutionalized or being more concerned with trying to perpetuate the organization and in doing so, giving up the freedom to act and to do. ... The other thing is that by the end of that time you'd either be dead or crazy …</blockquote>

By the time of its dissolution, many of the controversial ideas that once had defined SNCC's radicalism had become widely accepted among African Americans:<ref name="mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu" />

{{blockquote|A final SNCC legacy is the destruction of the psychological shackles which had kept black southerners in physical and mental peonage; SNCC helped break those chains forever. It demonstrated that ordinary women and men, young and old, could perform extraordinary tasks.|[[Julian Bond]]<ref name="Bond 2000">{{Cite news |last=Bond |first=Julian |title=SNCC: What We Did |newspaper=Monthly Review |date=October 2000 |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_5_52/ai_66937932/print?tag=artBody;col1 |page=legacy}}</ref>}}