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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Ella Baker, April 19, 1977. Interview G-0008. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

SNCC separates from SCLC

Though the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee tapped the resources and knowledge of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the students' group organized independently from the other.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Ella Baker, April 19, 1977. Interview G-0008. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

SUE THRASHER:
Was SCLC anxious to have that student meeting in Raleigh?
ELLA BAKER:
No, not especially, but they didn't evidence too much anxiety about having it. I'm sure they saw the potential, but they were perhaps assuming that it would be an automatic transfer from that meeting to this, to the SCLC. They had, in this little thing, said that so-and-so from Virginia, so-and-so from Alabama, so-and-so from Georgia…. In other words, they assumed that these so-and-so's, young leaders, could, by making a pitch for becoming an arm of SCLC, that it would automatically happen, and it didn't. But they came to the meetings that were held that summer once a month, the representatives that had been elected by the different states or whatever groups came to Atlanta, and out of this dialogue and what-have-you, this led then to the calling of a fall conference. And out of the fall conference came the cementing of the idea of a SNCC, although we'd had the office of the all summer. The little place that Jim described.
CASEY HAYDEN:
little skylight.
ELLA BAKER:
Oh, yes, it was like that, all right. We were only able to get it, though, because I think the same guy who got the office for me was willing to do that. And we paid Mr. Alexander whatever we paid him, forty dollars a month or twenty-five.