student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

United States civil rights organization, which discouraged segregation and encouraged empowerment of black Americans. It was formed in 1960 at a Raleigh, North Carolina, meeting called by Martin Luther King, Jr. Many students, both black and white, joined the movement, which conducted sit-ins against segregation, encouraged blacks to register and vote, established cooperatives and health clinics, and taught rural blacks to read and write.

After a split in the mid-1960s, SNCC became increasingly militant, urging Black powerî and denouncing the principle of nonviolence on which it had been founded. It dissolved after May 1970, when its leader, H. Rap Brown, became a fugitive from justice.