Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 93

Student sit-ins and other civil rights activism in the South generated interest and galvanized support from college campuses in northern states, leading to the formal organization of the Northern Student Movement (NSM) in 1962. Consisting primarily of young liberal whites who were sympathetic to the Civil Rights Movement, these students joined demonstrations and voter registration projects in southern states as well as assisted in community organizing efforts in northern urban cities. Along with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the NSM was labeled part of the “New Left,” but NSM executive director William Strickland stated that the organization was not a continuation of socialist or communist philosophy. They wanted to create new ideas and institutions, preferring to be called “New Democrats” or “New Realists.” The NSM backed up its rhetoric with action, moving from campus fund raising for the southern Civil Rights Movement and tutorial programs for African American children in the North to involvement in direct action. The organization facilitated rent strikes in Harlem, Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit. NSM activists from Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr colleges joined black students from Maryland State, Morgan State, Howard, and Lincoln University, the Civic Interest Group, and the Cambridge Non-Violent Action Committee (CNAC) in the Maryland Eastern-shore Project to address civil and voting rights issues during the summer of 1962. These successful efforts became the forerunner of more famous summer projects in succeeding years, such as the Mississippi “Freedom Summer” of 1964.

Fletcher F. Moon