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Creator
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)
Call number
Sc Photo Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Collection
Physical description
approximately 350 photographic prints. approximately 220 photographic prints : contact sheets. approximately 3275 photographs : negatives
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee photographs, Photographs and Prints Division. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library
Repository
Photographs and Prints Division. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee photographs depict the political and community activities of the Committee (also known as SNCC) during the early to mid-1960s. Produced by a variety of photographers who were part of the organization, the collection includes portraits of personnel, documentation of organizing activities, and candid photographs of African American communities across the South. The collection includes prints, contact sheets, and negatives.

Biographical/historical information

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an American civil rights organization, was formed in 1960 as a result of the successes of the student sit-in campaign to integrate segregated eating establishments in the American South. The sit-in campaign was a reflection of the organization's philosophy of non-violent direct action to end political and social disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. SNCC would later participate in the 1961 Freedom Rides and the 1963 March on Washington, as well as organize the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign. By 1966, SNCC, which had been an interracial organization, began to embrace a more militant Black power stance which alienated many supporters, including white liberals. By 1970, the organization generally ceased to exist.

SNCC established a photography department that became a significant part of the organization's strategy. Beginning with the photographer Danny Lyon, who was hired by SNCC executive secretary James Forman in 1962, the department expanded to recruit a diverse staff of photographers. In contrast to mainstream media coverage which focused primarily on violence, SNCC photographers intentionally worked to document the day-to-day work of organizing. This included voter registration drives, mass meetings, literacy training, and other actions. SNCC's images were distributed widely through posters, pamphlets, and publications, which served purposes of fundraising, recruitment, and outreach.

Scope and arrangement

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee photographs, dating from 1961 to 1966, document some of the participants, and the political and community activities, of the American civil rights organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The collection includes work by photographers, many of them African American, who were retained by SNCC to produce images for documentary and publicity purposes.

The collection includes individual prints as well as a significant amount of contact sheets, and many of the images are available as negatives.

The collection includes posed portraits and candid shots of SNCC personnel and volunteers; studio portraits of prominent figures; candid shots and group portraits of African American men, women and children; and views of SNCC political actions such as protests and lunch counter sit-ins, SNCC meetings, union and political organizing activities, voter registration drives, stage and musical group performances, health clinic services, African American communities in both the urban and rural South, white residents in the South, Southern police activities, and Ku Klux Klan members.

Individuals depicted include Ella Baker, Julian Bond, Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael), Bob Zellner, and Howard Zinn. Credited photographers include Julius Lester, Danny Lyon, Herbert Randall, Cliff Vaughs, and Tamio Wakayama, among others.

Of note are views of activities of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, in Washington, D.C. (1965); and views of an eviction, poor housing conditions and rent protests, probably organized by the SNCC- affiliated Atlanta Project, in the African American neighborhood of Vine City, in Atlanta, Georgia (1966).

Arrangement

The collection is organized into two groups: 1) Prints and Contact Sheets, and 2) Negatives.

The Prints and Contact Sheets are arranged in alphabetical order by subject content. Many of the folder titles were created by Schomburg Center staff.

The Negatives are arranged by photographer credit or lack thereof. Corresponding negatives exist for many positives, which can be located by matching the numbers on the verso of positives with information on negative envelopes.

Administrative information

Processing information

Arranged by Photographs and Prints Division staff between 1980s and circa 2010. Updates to arrangement and description and finding aid by Jack Patterson, 2026.

Related Material

The Photographs and Prints Division also holds the Bob Fletcher collection (Sc Photo Bob Fletcher Collection), documenting mainly SNCC activities during the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign in 1964, as well as a collection of photographs by SNCC photographer Matt Herron (Sc Photo Portfolio (Herron, M.)) which depict the voting rights campaign in Alabama and Mississippi from 1963 to 1966.

Using the collection

Location

Photographs and Prints Division. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Photographs and Prints Division Reading Room