Since Tocqueville’s day, the Civil Rights movement is perhaps the richest example of the collaborative tradition and the civic courage it demands and inspires. In popular memory, it is primarily a story of rights. But it was also, and perhaps primarily, a story of citizens building power together across differences of race, class, religion, and ideology to create political possibilities none of them could have achieved alone.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) practiced a form of community organizing with roots in hundreds of Black communities, which had built thousands of schools and libraries in the segregated South. In this approach, SNCC organizers—Black and white, Northern and Southern—sought first to understand local people’s knowledge and aspirations, then help them develop their own capacity for collective action.
The Freedom Schools of Mississippi taught Black Mississippians to read and to think critically, articulate their values, and imagine new futures for their communities. Ella Baker insisted on “group-centered leadership” rather than charismatic saviors, distributing power so that communities could sustain themselves long after any individual leader moved on.