Friends of SNCC Sending Supplies To Help Mississippi Sharecroppers

A van loaded with nearly five tons of books, clothing and food for dispossessed Mississippi sharecroppers will leave Cambridge for Ruleville, Miss., tonight.

This afternoon student volunteers from Harvard and Brandeis are expected to finish the four-day packing job that concludes the month-long drive conducted by the Boston Friends of SNCC. About 30 Harvard students have participated.

According to Mrs. Dorothy Zellner, coordinator of the drive, the supplies will aid 20,000 Negroes in rural Leflore County who were left stranded when the County Board of Supervisors decided to discontinue distribution of surplus food in the fall of 1962. The food had been provided by the Federal government at no cost.

"We attribute this discontinuation to the fact that we had been working on voter registration there," Mrs. Zellner said. Those Negroes who had registered also lost their jobs as field hands.

Support Essential

SNCC officials decided it was essential to help support them, or Negroes in other areas would refuse to register. Drives similar to this one were conducted last year in New York and Chicago.

"The response has been extraordinary." Mrs. Zellner said, "especially from the suburban women." Contributions have come from 31 communities in the Boston area. Robert E. Wright '65, chairman of the campus SNCC committee called the Harvard drive "pretty successful." He said that running the drive during exam period had affected the intake.

Although the campus SNCC committee plans a fund drive next month, there will probably not be another food and clothing drive until next year. Meanwhile, SNCC field workers continue to register Negroes in rural Mississippi and Alabama, and the number of dispossessed sharecroppers continues to rise.

Wright said SNCC officials hope by crash education programs to enable large numbers of Negroes to pass the literacy test required in both states. Most of those who had attempted to register before had failed them; Harvard and Radcliffe students will participate in one of these programs in Selma, Ala., this summer.

But Wright said SNCC has no plans for supporting the dispossessed Negroes, beyond the drives now being conducted in several cities. 'It's a movement based on faith, I guess, and will power."