Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2014
Poster Presentation
The Black Freedom Struggle of the 1960’s
Alex Wyler
Faculty Mentor: Jo-Ann Morgan
African American Studies
From the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in the 1950s to the Black
Panther Party (BPP) of the late 1960s, it was the hard work and determination of many
people in several organized groups people that brought about desegregation and social
change. The SCLC was a nonprofit organization established January 10 1957, that had
been actively working to desegregate bus systems in the South since 1955. The first
president of the SCLC was Martin Luther King Jr., well known for organizing the March
on Washington where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
Forming out of the SCLC, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
emerged in the 1960s, following a meeting organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University.
Former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry and current Congressman John Lewis were
among the students active with SNCC who participated in sit-ins and the freedom rides.
Shortly after SNCC was established, a group formed on the West Coast to advocate for
self-defense against what they saw as a repressive police force. Two college students in
Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and Booby Seale, formed the Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense in October 1966. By the end of the 1960s it was a nationwide
organization with thousands of members. This project will look at the role these and
other organizations played in the struggle to gain rights and power for African Americans
as the Civil Rights Movement evolved into the Black Power Movement from the 1950s
through the late 1960s.