Políticas Públicas en Salud Mental Dr. Jorge Rodríguez*

But we all know that each generation has its own test.

—Jane Addams (2002 [1902], 5)

[F]or a while all of us seemed to go crazy with hope for another kind of America.

—Audre Lorde (1982, 172)

Optimism about democracy is to-day under a cloud.

—John Dewey (1991 [1927], 110)

While the physical integration of public schools and the intellectual integra- tion of the public school curriculum provided the major occasion for the racialization of public education in the white American mind, it was not the only occasion. Recall that the struggle for civil rights generally was, in no small measure, conducted by students. True, these were college and univer- sity students, but in the “public mind” such distinctions faded into one con- flated impression. To further appreciate this phenomenon of racialization in which 1960s curriculum reform was initiated, let us review, briefly, moments

in the history of one of the major civil rights organizations in the 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

I choose SNCC because it was the most student-affiliated wing of the civil rights movement. Born during a period of extensive student protest activity, SNCC was widely regarded as the “shock troops” of the civil rights move- ment. SNCC activists established projects in areas such as rural Mississippi considered too dangerous by other organizations. Over time, the SNCC’s ac- tivities shifted from racial desegregation to political rights for African Ameri- cans, and its philosophical commitment to nonviolent direct action gave way to a secular, humanistic radicalism influenced by Marx, Camus, Malcolm X, and, concretely, by the SNCC organizers’ own horrifying experiences in southern black communities (Carson 1981).

SNCC’s founding conference was held April 16–18, 1960, in Raleigh, North Carolina, called by the Executive Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ella Baker. The initiating role of the Southern Chris- tian Leadership Conference (SCLC) might have signaled the widening con- trol over the southern black struggle by Martin Luther King, Jr., and those ministers associated with him. However, Baker understood the psychological significance of independence for student activists, and she resisted efforts to undermine their autonomy. Students at the conference affirmed their com- mitment to the nonviolent doctrines advocated by King, yet they appeared to be drawn to these ideas due less to their association with King and because they provided an appropriate rationale for student protest. The founding of SNCC was, as Clayborne Carson (1981, 19) points out, “an important step in the transformation of a limited student movement to desegregate lunch coun- ters into a broad and sustained movement to achieve major social reforms.” Not only the public school was at stake, it seemed to many (especially south- ern) whites, it was the public sphere itself.

SNCC appeared to outsiders and even to many black student leaders as merely a clearinghouse for the exchange of information about localized pro- test movements. To SNCC leaders, it was potentially an organization for ex- panding the struggle beyond its campus base to include all classes of blacks. At a fall conference in Atlanta on October 14–16, 1960, SNCC attempted to consolidate the student protest movement through the establishment of an organizational structure and by clarifying its goals and principles. In brief, the movement’s goals were “individual freedom and personhood” (quoted in Carson 1981, 27).

At the end of 1960 SNCC was still a loosely organized committee of part- time student activists who were uncertain of their roles in the southern strug- gle. Their political orientations could be said to be more-or-less conventional. Yet within months, SNCC would became a cadre of full-time organizers and protesters. Its militant identity was forged during the “freedom rides,” a se- ries of assaults on southern segregation that for the first time brought student

protesters into conflict not only with white southern legal officials, but with the Kennedy administration itself. SNCC’s militancy was further deepened by the experiences of student activists in Mississippi jails during the summer of 1961. It had been after attending a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) workshop in December that a few students decided to remain in jail after be- ing arrested rather than posting bond. Imprisonment, many decided, consti- tuted a crucial learning experience (Carson 1981).

The freedom rides not only contributed to the desegregation of southern transportation facilities, but they accelerated the formation of a self-con- sciously radical black student movement which would soon direct its militancy toward other, even more controversial issues, including the good faith of the federal government. Increasingly, SNCC charged the federal government with hypocrisy, as it failed to act forcefully to achieve domestic civil rights for Afri- can Americans while self-righteously proclaiming democratic values abroad (Carson 1981). This understanding would provide the foundation for a coali- tion with mostly white student groups opposing the war in Vietnam.

SNCC sent representatives—as did other civil rights organizations—to a meeting with Attorney General Robert Kennedy on June 16, 1961. (Ken- nedy’s concern with the state of American manhood becomes coded, in light of his complex and volatile relationship with black activist groups, as racial- ized.) At that 1961 meeting Kennedy suggested that the freedom ride cam- paign be refocused toward the goal of registering southern blacks who had been disenfranchised through violence, intimidation, and more subtle tech- niques such as literacy tests and poll taxes. Students affiliated with SNCC were divided over whether to become involved in voter registration work. While they understood that this was an important activity, many were reluc- tant to abandon the direct action tactics that had placed them at the forefront of the civil rights struggle (Carson 1981).

The black-dominated southern civil rights movement would have pro- found effect on the white student left. Without the knowledge of the nonvio- lent tactics and organizing techniques developed by SNCC in the South, white student activism would probably not have expanded as quickly or as successfully as it did. Tom Hayden and other leaders of the student-led anti- Vietnam War movement learned much from their experiences in the South. Students for a Democratic Society, the northern radical student movement, as well as other predominantly white student organizations, attracted stu- dents whose induction into political activism had occurred during their en- gagement in the struggle for civil rights in the South (Carson 1981).

The pace and scope of protest in the years following accelerated and ex- panded, respectively, intensifying white southerners’ sense of emergency. During 1963, Southern Regional Council researchers estimated that 930 pub- lic protest demonstrations took place in at least 115 cities in 11 southern states. More than 20,000 persons were arrested during these protests, in con-

trast to approximately 3,600 arrests in the period of nonviolent protests prior to the fall of 1961. In 1963, 10 persons died in circumstances directly related to racial protests; at least 35 bombings occurred. Those SNCC activists who were engaged in mass protests became aware of a militancy, especially among urban African Americans, that surpassed their own. This militancy among the people compelled them to reassess their own convictions regarding nonvi- olent protest (Carson 1981).

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