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>> reporter: among the hundreds of thousands, two yuck activists who were filled with hope. >> i was all the way at the top. over to the left. >> reporter: courtland is now 82, but 60 years ago, he was a 22-year-old working for the civil rights organization, the student nonviolent coordinating committee. >> what i remember is a platform is there in the mid-center. >> reporter: edward flanagan was there too. >> where were you? >> i was sitting on the wall up top there by the entertainers. >> reporter: flanagan is 80 now, but on the day of the march, he was a 20-year-old who had just finished his shift as a waiter, like scores of others, he wanted to take a stand for civil rights. >> i was very close to joan bye yaz. i had on a new pair of shoes. she was barefoot.
the student nonviolent coordinating committee. - young people working with the student nonviolent coordinating committee or sncc, as we call it are characterized by restless energy, radical change in race relations in the united states, their world is upset and they feel that if they are ever going to get it straight, they must upset it more. - [ella] and this was sncc. now how they got that way, it didn't happen overnight, but there was a need. - [courtland] i would say the two dominant groups in the student nonviolent coordinating committee are the people who came out of the nashville student movement. that's john lewis, diane nash, bernard lafayette, and the howard university people, stokely, cleve sellers, myself. and the one thing ms. baker said to us
with the word black power. everybody else got theirs, except us. all we have is the color of our skin, and we're ashamed of that. - [courtland] what we learned in lowndes was the whole discussion of power. stokely expresses nationally, what we were talking about locally. - all this week, you've been telling the mississippi marchers, they must achieve black power. what do you want them to do to get it? - well, i think that what they have to do to get black power is to organize themselves politically, to register, to vote and to form independent political bases, which will then allow them the chance to carry out and make effective the changes they need to bring about decent lives in mississippi. - [paul b johnson] black power is not a harmless phrase. don't be fooled by it. it harbors the seeds of a hurricane of hate and hostility that could sweep sanity aside and introduce an era of anarchy that
i knew my illustrations were going to be really crude and courtland said, "yeah, yeah, you know, i think that could work." - [hasan] and you know, you look at it. and you say like, "i get the sheriff thing. you want to end police violence, but a coroner, a tax assessor, like how is that gonna lead the revolution? but it was critical to the lives of black folk. the tax assessor historically had always overtaxed black landowners and under taxed white landowners and white landowners were the ones who had all the land. and so part of the reason why the county was so poor is because taxes were unequally assessed. - [jennifer] sncc held workshops, both in atlanta and in lowndes county to make people aware of what it meant to hold office. - [john] we had a mass meeting at the church and nominated our candidate.
and if they're the majority, this county has been run by 20% of the people who are white, who have seized power illegally and who have maintained power through all sorts of terroristic manners. the rest of the country ask now that these black people get with these white people and reform these white people. and i say to the black people that we don't have to bear the cross for them, let us form our own party and let them take care of their own business. so we form our own party and we seek power. we don't seek integration. that's irrelevant to what we want. we want power. and this is the way we get it. - [hasan] and they get a lot of criticism from liberals, white liberals, but then also from black moderates who are like, "no, no, no, you're supposed to be supporting the democrats, you can't go your own way." - [courtland] all of the establishment, the white establishment, newspapers, the washington post, new york times, were saying that what we were doing in lowndes county was reverse racism.
- [john] those people knew what happened. they was ready to go again. was waiting on '68. that was '66. - [lillian] and every aspect of the political arena, you wanted some black person in there to plead our cause. see what's going on. - [courtland] there was no turning back. the concept that people who lived in that county who were black should not only vote, but they should be in power. - [ruby] lowndes county was moving on with its own rhythm. and it was time for us to begin to think about where we would go. - [hasan] sncc organizers were guided by this belief that "our job is to work ourselves out of a job." "if we do our job right then we won't be needed here." it's also one of snccs last major local organizing projects. (funky music)
would represent a real and present danger to the very fabric of society in the united states. - [courtland] wherever black people are talking about their being in power or their being able to define reality. there is always a counter attack. - [andrew] when white americans heard blacks say black power and clench their fist, in their mind, blacks were now going to do them, all the evil things that whites had done to blacks during the last 200 years. now, i don't think that was in the thinking of even the most militant black men. i think black power for them meant the right to determine their own destiny. - [stokely] the projection of the term black power came from the white press, never from black people in this country. the debate about that was ranged among white people and the
such a dangerous place. - [courtland] freedom summer was about bringing the country to mississippi and creating the mississippi freedom democratic party that eventually made the challenge in atlantic city. (ominous piano music) - [ella] the message that the freedom democratic party believes, that a political party should be open to all of the people who wish to suscribe to its principle. - [hasan] the democratic national convention, which occurs in atlantic city in august of 1964 is really a pivotal moment in the evolution of sncc organizing in particular. sncc activists, just like local people are hopeful if they make the case, that the reason why african americans are not participating en masse in the electoral politics in mississippi is because