SNCC’s strongest criticism of SCLC was that SCLC used local people as means to an end. The black residents of Selma (and the out-of-towners) went through hell. Yes, the vivid abuse there produced the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and yes, the local volunteers harbored few illusions about the brutality they’d experience, but SNCC still charged that even two years post-1965, things in Selma were about the same as they always had been, and SCLC had effectively abandoned the community there.
In fact, the slow rate of change in white people’s behavior even after federal legislation led to SNCC becoming more militant, especially after Stokely Carmichael took over for John Lewis, leading to his popularizing of the phrase “black power.” Martin, and SCLC’s, frustration with SNCC was that their rhetoric was divisive, and could stoke a white backlash, undoing the progress made up to that point. The inter-organizational struggles were fascinating, and sometimes almost made-for-TV, like the last-minute wrangling over John Lewis’s speech at the 1963 March on Washington--which could have scuttled the all-together image the leaders wanted.…show more content… Bearing the Cross isn’t a hagiography. Martin was a brave man, selfless in many respects, but also an unstoppable womanizer, a misogynist who alienated several would-have-really-helped-SCLC women (e.g. Ella Baker), and absent husband. And that’s okay. We should celebrate him for the good he did, without needing to pretend he was without
