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 Let's Talk
Denise Rolark Barnes
Columnist Page
Friday, February 11, 2005; Page 21
Stories of the Revolution Live On
Anyone who missed the memorial service held in honor of James Forman last Saturday at People’s Congregational Church missed one of the most significant events that will be held in this city during this entire Black History Month. I guarantee nothing will surpass it this year, except maybe the 10th Anniversary of the Million Man March in October.
The gathering served as a celebration of the life of Mr. James Rufus Forman, the first executive secretary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), from 1960 to 1966 and the life he lived thereafter.
After living many years in cities throughout the South, Mr. Forman eventually dug his roots in the District of Columbia. By the time I met him, he was only the shadow of the man talked about for more than four hours by his closest friends and colleagues last Saturday, the day I really got to know him.
Surrounded by an impressive group of men and women who are civil rights legends in their own right, someone approached me and asked me how many people did I recognize? I pointed out a few, not many, because I realized that this group of activists was eerily unfamiliar to me. My examiner further inquired if my parents were ever a part of SNCC? My father, who passed in 1994, was nearly 40 years old when SNCC was established in 1960. My mother and my stepmother were not far behind and I was only six years old. There was a gap, and for those who are on the tail end of the baby boomers, like me, we were too far behind to grab onto the rope that encircled the student civil rights activists of the 1960s.
To hear the stories and imagine the revolutionary spirit and determination that led these brave young men and women, Black and White, Protestant and Jewish, to walk into harm’s way in order to make a better way for generation’s to follow was invigorating. As Julian Bond explained it, SNCC was organized. In 1965, it had the largest staff of any civil rights organization with more than 50 chapters around the country. SNCC created two independent political parties and two labor unions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which still exists today.
It was Ella Baker, a member of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) who called a group of student activists together at Shaw University in 1960 and discouraged them from creating a student chapter of the SCLC. According to the stories told at People’s on Saturday, Baker believed these young energetic freedom fighters would get frustrated by the older more deliberate SCLC leadership. Instead, she encouraged them to create their own organization, after which SNCC was born.
The organization was formed to give Black college students a voice and a role in the civil rights movement which began with the lunch counter sit-ins throughout the segregated South. According to Annie Pearl Avery, a former SNCC member, “we softened up the places where terror and murders had taken place” in order for Dr. King and the SCLC to come in and do their thing.
Bond said, “SCLC mobilized and SNCC organized.” The legendary organizer was James Forman, who sent in the anxious college students, both Black and White, to do the “softening up” Avery spoke of. “Softening up” included being arrested, beaten or even killed as they staged direct action protests to end the practice of segregation in public facilities including restrooms, restaurants, and even waiting rooms at interstate bus facilities along the routes from D.C. through North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
It was Forman’s global perspective that gave King his perspective on the war in Vietnam, SNCC veteran Bob Moses said. Photos of Forman show him to the right or to the left of Dr. King in marches throughout the South. And, he was one of the principal organizers of the 1963 March on Washington.
Marion Barry laughed when he wondered out loud how Forman so capably managed this “different generation” of revolutionaries, who wanted to do things their own way. Barry, along with Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmicheal), Eleanor Holmes Norton, John Lewis, Dori Ladner and H. Rap Brown are just a few of the distinct personalities that defined SNCC, who happened to call themselves veterans of this historic movement and many who were also present on Saturday to honor Mr. Forman.
So it’s no wonder that I sat there in awe and dismay realizing that I never really got to know Mr. Forman when I had not one chance, but many chances to get to know him. Thank God for the civil rights veterans, their memories and their gift of sharing. Through them, James Forman, our history and the revolution will live on.
For Denise Rolark Barnes send email to drbarnes@washingtoninformer.com |
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