Freedom Fund Head Asks Student Support of SNCC

Walter Williams, head of the Southern Student Freedom Fund, has sent to campus leaders throughout the country asking them to initiate fund drives in support of the voter registration schools run by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee SNCC) in Mississippi. The money will also be used to help Southern students dismissed from college for protesting segregation.

Citing "the tremendous success" of campaigns at Harvard and Yale in the Fall, Williams suggested the sale of "Freedom Buttons" as a good way for students to show support for "the struggle that is going on all over the South to end discrimination and segregation."

The buttons, similar to those sold last month, show a white and a Negro hand clasped across a map of North America with the words "We Shall Overcome" above. The picture is the SNCC symbol; the words are from a often sung by students during protest demonstrations.

The National Student Association, sponsor of the Freedom Fund, is acting under a resolution adopted at last summer's national congress directing the Association to lend full support to SNCC activities. Williams, a former student body president at Jackson State College, was thrown out of school early this year for his part in several segregation protests.

The main target of SNCC's work in Mississippi has been a statute permitting voting registrars to ask applicants to interpret any part of the state constitution. Under the law registrars can ask Negroes to answer virtually impossible questions, and thus prevent their registration on supposedly legal grounds.

Last month, however, the Justice Department filed a suit against a similar voting law in Lousiana, charging it violated the "equal protection" clause in the Constitution. A suit is also expected to be filed in Mississippi, but SNCC will continue to run its schools since much work remains to train Negroes to pass even a fair test.

In its report last Fall the Civil Rights Commission, of which Erwin N. Griswald, dean of the Law School, is a member, noted the subjectivity of the two state statutes. It suggested establishment of a national standard of a sixth grade education as sufficient for prospective voters. The report also said that assuring Negroes full voting rights was the key to solving problems of mass discrimination still practiced in the South.

Citing "the tremendous success" of campaigns at Harvard and Yale in the Fall, Williams suggested the sale of "Freedom Buttons" as a good way for students to show support for "the struggle that is going on all over the South to end discrimination and segregation."

The buttons, similar to those sold last month, show a white and a Negro hand clasped across a map of North America with the words "We Shall Overcome" above. The picture is the SNCC symbol; the words are from a often sung by students during protest demonstrations.

The National Student Association, sponsor of the Freedom Fund, is acting under a resolution adopted at last summer's national congress directing the Association to lend full support to SNCC activities. Williams, a former student body president at Jackson State College, was thrown out of school early this year for his part in several segregation protests.

The main target of SNCC's work in Mississippi has been a statute permitting voting registrars to ask applicants to interpret any part of the state constitution. Under the law registrars can ask Negroes to answer virtually impossible questions, and thus prevent their registration on supposedly legal grounds.

Last month, however, the Justice Department filed a suit against a similar voting law in Lousiana, charging it violated the "equal protection" clause in the Constitution. A suit is also expected to be filed in Mississippi, but SNCC will continue to run its schools since much work remains to train Negroes to pass even a fair test.

In its report last Fall the Civil Rights Commission, of which Erwin N. Griswald, dean of the Law School, is a member, noted the subjectivity of the two state statutes. It suggested establishment of a national standard of a sixth grade education as sufficient for prospective voters. The report also said that assuring Negroes full voting rights was the key to solving problems of mass discrimination still practiced in the South.

The National Student Association, sponsor of the Freedom Fund, is acting under a resolution adopted at last summer's national congress directing the Association to lend full support to SNCC activities. Williams, a former student body president at Jackson State College, was thrown out of school early this year for his part in several segregation protests.

The main target of SNCC's work in Mississippi has been a statute permitting voting registrars to ask applicants to interpret any part of the state constitution. Under the law registrars can ask Negroes to answer virtually impossible questions, and thus prevent their registration on supposedly legal grounds.

Last month, however, the Justice Department filed a suit against a similar voting law in Lousiana, charging it violated the "equal protection" clause in the Constitution. A suit is also expected to be filed in Mississippi, but SNCC will continue to run its schools since much work remains to train Negroes to pass even a fair test.

In its report last Fall the Civil Rights Commission, of which Erwin N. Griswald, dean of the Law School, is a member, noted the subjectivity of the two state statutes. It suggested establishment of a national standard of a sixth grade education as sufficient for prospective voters. The report also said that assuring Negroes full voting rights was the key to solving problems of mass discrimination still practiced in the South.