Robert Moses: Robert Moses was on of SNCC’s most powerful speaker. He was a Harvard graduate student and a mathematics teacher in Harlem. Robert spoke slowly, and took awhile to gather his thoughts but he was powerful because he seemed humble, ordinary, and accessible. With fress new ideas and strong leaders such as Moses SNCC became a strong and vital organization for students wanting to take part in the civil rights movement.
Anne Moody: Joined SNCC voter registration drive during her first year at Tougaloo college. She said about her other SNCC workers, “I have never known people willing and determined to help other people.” Moody was an African-American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, joining the Civil Rights Movement, and fighting racism against blacks in the United States beginning in the 1960s.
John F. Kennedy: Kennedy moved slowly on the issues beginning with fair housing. At the same time Kennedy also named a number of segregationists to federal courts. As civil rights movements gained momentum and violence began to spread, Kennedy could no longer avoid the issue. He was deeply disturbed by the scenes of violence in the South that flooded the media.
Malcolm X: Outside the mainstream civil rights movement, more radial and militant political leaders emerged. The most well known, Malcolm X also known as Malcolm Little. Little grew up in the ghettos in Detroit, Boston, and New York, Little turned to crime. While in jail, he joined the Nation of Islam, which preached about black separation and self-help. After 12 years of preaching for the Nation of Islam, Malcolm later came to be one of the leaders in a unified civil rights movement. His change of hard made him some enemies, he was killed nine months later. He however had influenced younger members of SNCC.
The Black Panthers: In the fall of 1966, a new militant political party, was formed known as The Black Panthers. The Black Panthers wanted African Americans to lead their own communities. They wanted this to so desperately happy that they demanded the government rebuild the nations ghettos to make up for the years of neglect. They would want combat when they saw police brutality in the ghettos. This lead to them to become engaged in direct confrontation with white authorities. The Black Panther states the words "Power flows from the barrel of a gun." Even though, they organized some beneficial community programs, they often found themselves in violent encounters with police. The black power gave rise to the slogan "Black Is Beautiful". This lead to a serious split in the civil rights movement.