Northern Student Movement
- New Haven, Connecticut and New York City
William L. Strickland
The Northern Student Movement (NSM) was an American civil rights organization that drew inspiration from sit-ins and lunch counter protests led by students in the south.[1] NSM was founded at Yale University in 1961 by Peter J. Countryman, which grew out of the work of a committee formed by the New England Student Christian Movement,[2] and was affiliated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).[1] Countryman began NSM's work by collecting books for a predominantly African-American college and raising funds for SNCC. He then turned to organizing tutoring programs for inner city youth in northeastern cities. By 1963, NSM was reported to be helping as many as 3,500 children using 2,200 student volunteers from 50 colleges and universities.[3] NSM also encouraged direct-action protests, sending volunteers to sit-ins in the South and organizing rent strikes in the North.[2][4][5] In the early 60's, NSM's work was divided into three areas which were each headed by an executive committee: "the campus, the community, and the south."[6]
History
Peter J. Countryman, a white Yale student, helped assemble the NSM in the fall of 1961 from “existing networks of the Student Christian Movement of New England.”[1] The mission of the NSM was to "support the work of the SNCC and to "challenge discrimmination in the North". The Northern Student Movement soon began organizing projects in the communities of the North to fight against injustice in Black communities.
Countryman stepped down as NSM's executive director in 1963 and was replaced by William L. Strickland.
Early work
The organization started some tutoring and community programs in the most segregated and poverty-stricken urban areas up past the Mason-Dixon line. “In the Roxbury-South End area of Boston, NSM led a voter registration drive, preschool programs, and a Black history workshop.” In Philadelphia, a Northern Student Movement freedom library was started to “have books by and about black people.”[7]
The NSM had 50 fulltime employees with different sources reporting of somewhere between 2,200-2,500 college student volunteers. These college students focused on helping the communities like tutoring and establishing the North End Community Action Project “that organized protests against discriminatory hiring practices.”[7]
Also, the Northern Student Movement focused more on organizing locally. However, while advocates of Black Power acknowledged the achievements and dedication of the hard working white NSM members, and a dramatic shift taken place of creating an all-Black organization because many felt that blacks really needed to be the ones determining what their communities needed. Bill Strickland, the second executive director of the NSM, was the leadman in “rent strikes, school boycotts, and neighborhood-initiated community projects”.[7]
Later years
After a shooting that wounded NSM volunteer, Bruce Payne, who was with a group of fellow volunteers in Mississippi to help with a voter registration campaign, sparked a visit by Dr. Martin Luther King to where it NSM all started, Yale University. He wrote a letter to the Universities chaplain, an advocate of the NSM, which he writes that he was “really heartened by the movement in the right direction I sense at Yale.” [7]
The NSM declined later in the decade as Black students began to protest and negotiate for the successful temporary removal of police from campuses, amnesty for striking students, and the creation of Black studies courses like the ones the NSM started provided in other cities.
Archives
The records of the Northern Student Movement, including a complete run of its periodical, Freedom North, are on file with the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division of the New York Public Library.[6]
Oral History interviews with several NSM organizers are available through the Columbia Center for Oral History Research.[8]
Notes and References
- ^ a b c "Northern Student Movement - SNCC Digital Gateway". SNCC Digital Gateway. Retrieved 2018-12-02.
- ^ a b Nina Mjagkij (ed.), Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2001, pp. 462-463. ISBN 0-8153-2309-3 In 1967, the New England Student Christian Movement changed its name to the University Christian Movement in New England. [1]
- ^ "Education: Down-to-Earth Idealism," Time, May 17, 1963.
- ^ Mandi Issacs Jackson, "Harlem's Rent Strike and Rat War: Representation, Housing Access and Tenant Resistance in New York, 1958-1964," American Studies, University of Kansas, v. 47, no. 1, (2006) pp. 53-79.
- ^ Newfield, Jack (2007-04-17). "The Student Left". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2019-06-13.
- ^ a b Northern Student Movement Records, 1961-1966, New York Public Library. Work of the NSM The organization started some tutoring and community programs in the most segregated and poverty-stricken urban areas up past the Mason-Dixon line. “In the Roxbury-South End area of Boston, NSM led a voter registration drive, preschool programs, and a Black history workshop.” In Philadelphia, a Northern Student Movement freedom library was started to “have books by and about black people.” The NSM had 50 fulltime employees with different sources reporting of somewhere between 2200-2500 college student volunteers. These college students focused on helping the communities like tutoring and establishing the North End Community Action Project “that organized protests against discriminatory hiring practices.” <ref>“The Northern Student Movement: Connecticut History: a CTHumanities Project.” Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project, connecticuthistory.org/the-northern-student-movement/.
- ^ a b c d "The Northern Student Movement | Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project". Retrieved 2019-11-17.
- ^ Columbia Oral History Project
External links
- Northern Student Movement: A collection of articles and links to resources that describe the work of a civil rights organization founded by Peter Countryman and others....
- Columbia University Libraries, Columbia Center for Oral History: Oral history interviews about the Northern Student Movement
- v
- t
- e
(timeline)
groups
- Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
- Atlanta Student Movement
- Black Panther Party
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Committee for Freedom Now
- Committee on Appeal for Human Rights
- Council for United Civil Rights Leadership
- Council of Federated Organizations
- Dallas County Voters League
- Deacons for Defense and Justice
- Georgia Council on Human Relations
- Highlander Folk School
- Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
- Lowndes County Freedom Organization
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
- Montgomery Improvement Association
- NAACP
- Nashville Student Movement
- Nation of Islam
- Northern Student Movement
- National Council of Negro Women
- National Urban League
- Operation Breadbasket
- Regional Council of Negro Leadership
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Regional Council
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- The Freedom Singers
- United Auto Workers (UAW)
- Wednesdays in Mississippi
- Women's Political Council
- Ralph Abernathy
- Victoria Gray Adams
- Zev Aelony
- Mathew Ahmann
- Muhammad Ali
- William G. Anderson
- Gwendolyn Armstrong
- Arnold Aronson
- Ella Baker
- James Baldwin
- Marion Barry
- Daisy Bates
- Harry Belafonte
- James Bevel
- Claude Black
- Gloria Blackwell
- Randolph Blackwell
- Unita Blackwell
- Ezell Blair Jr.
- Joanne Bland
- Julian Bond
- Joseph E. Boone
- William Holmes Borders
- Amelia Boynton
- Bruce Boynton
- Raylawni Branch
- Stanley Branche
- Ruby Bridges
- Aurelia Browder
- H. Rap Brown
- Ralph Bunche
- Guy Carawan
- Stokely Carmichael
- Johnnie Carr
- James Chaney
- J. L. Chestnut
- Shirley Chisholm
- Colia Lafayette Clark
- Ramsey Clark
- Septima Clark
- Xernona Clayton
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Kathleen Cleaver
- Charles E. Cobb Jr.
- Annie Lee Cooper
- Dorothy Cotton
- Claudette Colvin
- Vernon Dahmer
- Jonathan Daniels
- Abraham Lincoln Davis
- Angela Davis
- Joseph DeLaine
- Dave Dennis
- Annie Devine
- Patricia Stephens Due
- Joseph Ellwanger
- Charles Evers
- Medgar Evers
- Myrlie Evers-Williams
- Chuck Fager
- James Farmer
- Walter Fauntroy
- James Forman
- Marie Foster
- Golden Frinks
- Andrew Goodman
- Robert Graetz
- Fred Gray
- Jack Greenberg
- Dick Gregory
- Lawrence Guyot
- Prathia Hall
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Fred Hampton
- William E. Harbour
- Vincent Harding
- Dorothy Height
- Audrey Faye Hendricks
- Lola Hendricks
- Aaron Henry
- Oliver Hill
- Donald L. Hollowell
- James Hood
- Myles Horton
- Zilphia Horton
- T. R. M. Howard
- Ruby Hurley
- Cecil Ivory
- Jesse Jackson
- Jimmie Lee Jackson
- Richie Jean Jackson
- T. J. Jemison
- Esau Jenkins
- Barbara Rose Johns
- Vernon Johns
- Frank Minis Johnson
- Clarence Jones
- J. Charles Jones
- Matthew Jones
- Vernon Jordan
- Tom Kahn
- Clyde Kennard
- A. D. King
- C.B. King
- Coretta Scott King
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Martin Luther King Sr.
- Bernard Lafayette
- James Lawson
- Bernard Lee
- Sanford R. Leigh
- Jim Letherer
- Stanley Levison
- John Lewis
- Viola Liuzzo
- Z. Alexander Looby
- Joseph Lowery
- Clara Luper
- Danny Lyon
- Malcolm X
- Mae Mallory
- Vivian Malone
- Bob Mants
- Thurgood Marshall
- Benjamin Mays
- Franklin McCain
- Charles McDew
- Ralph McGill
- Floyd McKissick
- Joseph McNeil
- James Meredith
- William Ming
- Jack Minnis
- Amzie Moore
- Cecil B. Moore
- Douglas E. Moore
- Harriette Moore
- Harry T. Moore
- Queen Mother Moore
- William Lewis Moore
- Irene Morgan
- Bob Moses
- William Moyer
- Elijah Muhammad
- Diane Nash
- Charles Neblett
- Huey P. Newton
- Edgar Nixon
- Jack O'Dell
- James Orange
- Rosa Parks
- James Peck
- Charles Person
- Homer Plessy
- Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
- Fay Bellamy Powell
- Rodney N. Powell
- Al Raby
- Lincoln Ragsdale
- A. Philip Randolph
- George Raymond
- George Raymond Jr.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon
- Cordell Reagon
- James Reeb
- Frederick D. Reese
- Walter Reuther
- Gloria Richardson
- David Richmond
- Bernice Robinson
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Angela Russell
- Bayard Rustin
- Bernie Sanders
- Michael Schwerner
- Bobby Seale
- Cleveland Sellers
- Charles Sherrod
- Alexander D. Shimkin
- Fred Shuttlesworth
- Modjeska Monteith Simkins
- Glenn E. Smiley
- A. Maceo Smith
- Kelly Miller Smith
- Mary Louise Smith
- Maxine Smith
- Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
- Charles Kenzie Steele
- Hank Thomas
- Dorothy Tillman
- A. P. Tureaud
- Hartman Turnbow
- Albert Turner
- C. T. Vivian
- Wyatt Tee Walker
- Hollis Watkins
- Walter Francis White
- Roy Wilkins
- Hosea Williams
- Kale Williams
- Robert F. Williams
- Andrew Young
- Whitney Young
- Sammy Younge Jr.
- Bob Zellner
- James Zwerg
songs
- "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round"
- "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus"
- "Kumbaya"
- "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize"
- "Oh, Freedom"
- "This Little Light of Mine"
- "We Shall Not Be Moved"
- "We Shall Overcome"
- "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
- Jim Crow laws
- Lynching in the United States
- Plessy v. Ferguson
- Buchanan v. Warley
- Hocutt v. Wilson
- Sweatt v. Painter
- Hernandez v. Texas
- Loving v. Virginia
- African-American women in the movement
- Jews in the civil rights movement
- Fifth Circuit Four
- 16th Street Baptist Church
- Kelly Ingram Park
- A.G. Gaston Motel
- Bethel Baptist Church
- Brown Chapel
- Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
- Holt Street Baptist Church
- Edmund Pettus Bridge
- March on Washington Movement
- African-American churches attacked
- List of lynching victims in the United States
- Freedom Schools
- Freedom songs
- Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence"
- Voter Education Project
- 1960s counterculture
- African American founding fathers of the United States
- Eyes on the Prize
- In popular culture
- Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
- Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
- Civil Rights Memorial
- Civil Rights Movement Archive
- Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument
- Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument
- Freedom Rides Museum
- Freedom Riders National Monument
- King Center for Nonviolent Social Change
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Mississippi Civil Rights Museum
- National Civil Rights Museum
- National Voting Rights Museum
- St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument
historians