Black Student Groups in North Carolina

In April 1960, Shaw University in Raleigh, NC, held a conference focusing on civil rights for black Americans; from this event would spring the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the most prominent black student organizations in the nation. From that moment forward, the Research Triangle area-- including Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh-- played host to several black student groups of varying political affiliations, eventually including the SAAC among its ranks.

It is clear that the Black Power movement was influencing student groups in North Carolina by 1967. One particularly important event that helped shaped the Black Power movement in North Carolina took place at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). In the fall of 1967, UNCG students organized and hosted a three-day forum on the Black Power movement. Discussions and workshops were held on a variety of topics, including the history of the movement and how Black Power influenced black self-image. Some members of the conference were also highly critical of the older and seemingly less confrontational SNCC, with one anonymous pamphlet accusing the organization of serving as a "buffer zone" between "angry young blacks" and liberal whites, and not providing a strong enough foundation from which change could be enacted. During the conference, the Black Power movement became a focal point for local newspapers.

Black Power also spread to the Triangle during this period: in 1967, UNC-Chapel Hill student Preston Dobbins and other black students disbanded the campus chapter of the NAACP and replaced it with the Black Student Movement, while Duke University students established the Afro-American Society. Though the SAAC was not the first Black Power student group in the Triangle, what direct influence surrounding campus organizations, such as Duke University's Afro-American Society and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Black Student Movement, had on the group is currently unknown.

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