Black Power in the Red

In 1960, when he was 20, John Lewis helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At 23, he became its national chairman and one of the most aggressive Negro leaders in the civil rights movement. With the movement's radical elements in the ascendant, Alabama-born Lewis, a mature 26, was replaced as chairman in May by Harlem-reared Stokely Carmichael, 24, who has made "black power!" the rallying cry for the newest form of racism (TIME, July 1). Last week Lewis announced his resignation from S.N.C.C.

Lewis' disaffection is plainly a result of S.N.C.C.'s new militancy. He has refused to parrot the black-power line, explaining: "I'm not prepared to give up my personal commitment to nonviolence." He argues that the Mississippi march, which Carmichael tried to dominate, may have done the civil rights cause more harm than good.

Julian Bond, the S.N.C.C. public relations director, who was denied a seat in the Georgia legislature because of his admiration of draft-card burners, acknowledges he is "looking for a good job." He has not been paid his $85-a-week salary for two months. Other "older" S.N.C.C. officials may follow. Trusty financial contributors are slipping away, repelled by Carmichael's brand of racism. The organization no longer has a friendly working relationship with Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which is opposed to Carmichael's philosophy and irritated by his financial fecklessness. Though S.N.C.C., King's group and the Congress of Racial Equality were supposed to share the Mississippi march expenses (more than $25,000), King wound up holding the bill, and has let it be known that his organization will henceforth work alone in Mississippi.

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