Established at Shaw University in April 1960, SNCC helped transform the role of students in the freedom movement. Ella J. Baker, former NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference official inspired its formation. Her core ideas, especially “participatory democracy” and empowerment of ordinary people, grounded its organizing.

It pursued sit-ins and voter education campaigns; it called for Black Power in 1966. Women seldom served on its executive committee and never led the organization. But women were invaluable in civil rights activism, for instance as Freedom Riders and voter registration organizers. As teachers in Freedom Schools, they contributed to literacy, suffrage, and the hope for the “Beloved Community.”