The Selling of Civil Rights

Book excerpt: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed in April 1960 to advance civil rights. With a tremendous human rights mission facing them, the founding SNCC members included communication and publicity as part of their initial purpose. This book provides a broad overview of these efforts from SNCC's birth in 1960 until the beginning of its demise in the late 1960s and examines the communication tools that SNCC leaders and members used to organize, launch, and carry out their campaign to promote civil rights throughout the 1960s. It specifically explores how SNCC workers used public relations to support and promote their platforms and to build a grassroots community movement; and how the organization later rejected these strategies for a radical and isolated approach.