In a special session of the Modjeska Simkins School on April 26 that was open to the public, UNC professor Dr. Erik Gellman, author of Death Blow to Jim Crow, The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights, led discussion on the Southern Negro Youth Congress.

Founded in 1937, SNYC grew out of the National Negro Congress and the leftist student movement of the 1930s. SNYC was a radical, interracial organization that managed to make extraordinary gains in a brutally hostile political climate. It has much to teach today’s movement organizers.