Students Begin Drive To Finance SNCC Projects in South

A campaign to raise funds for Negro voter registration projects in the South will begin at the University tomorrow. In a drive to support the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, under-graduates will ask for contribution in House Dining Halls as well as contacting other Cambridge sources.

SNCC, which has organized voter registration in such places as Albany, Ga. and Greenwood, Miss., "is in serious financial trouble," according to Claude Weaver '65, chairman of the Harvard-Radcliffe Civil Rights Coordinating Committee. "If they don't receive more money within the next month, their projects may have to be abandoned," Weaver said.

The organization was founded in early 1960, in response to sit-in demonstrations in Greensville, N.C. At first, SNCC's objective was simply to coordinate activities of autonomous integration groups in the South, supporting direct action campaign throughout the South.

By the summer of 1961, integration leaders in the South were generally agreed that direct action campaigns, such as sit-ins, stand-ins, and Freedom Rides, were not sufficient to bring about desegregation. SNCC decided to implement new programs, as well as coordinate those that were already in existence.

One of the first projects they initiated was a voter registration campaign in Terrell County, Ga., which laid the groundwork for the popular movement that brought Martin Luther King and other integration leaders to Albany last summer.

This October, SNCC began a similar campaign in Greenwood, Miss., encountering strong resistance from segregationists there. During one week in February, after SNCC had begun to register as many as 150 voters a day, four of the organization members were shot at, and one was nearly killed.