Although this photograph seems to capture a violent and degrading moment, the title indicates that these two people are training with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The SNCC, founded for Black student activists in 1960 by veteran organizer Ella Baker, was one of the most important civil rights groups of the decade. Initially it prepared its members for protests against segregation and voter suppression through passive-resistance workshops. The movement’s leaders knew that Black civil rights activists were held to a higher standard of conduct than either the mobs or officers attempting to suppress them, so at these trainings, volunteers were struck and antagonized but coached not to retaliate physically or verbally, only with passivity and song. By the late 1960s, however, a growing faction of the SNCC had become impatient with nonviolence and moved toward Black separatism, seeing it as the only viable path to equality.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)