Pipe Dream is celebrating its 60th year as Binghamton University’s independent student newspaper. It started as the Colonial News in fall 1946 and has been going strong twice a week ever since. So we’re taking a look back into the paper’s archives, at the people and events that have made the news over BU’s past 60 years.

Friday, Feb. 15, 1963:

Civil Rights Organizations Expand Their Scope

Two years before Congress enacted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the fight was still going on for complete African American suffrage in America. During the years leading up to this act, many civil rights organizations were formed so people could work together in hopes of putting an end to segregation. Pipe Dream reported on the expansion of two organizations, describing civil rights as ‘the most urgent and pressing domestic problem facing America.’ These two groups, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Northern Student Movement (NSM) were effectively raising awareness and, in general, changing the political landscape of America.

The SNCC and NSM used nonviolent methods to promote desegregation in both the southern and northern states. Both groups were described as being funded mainly by colleges across the country.

Originally founded by students, the SNCC organized various nonviolent protest movements throughout the South in order to garnish attention for their causes. After conventional means of nonviolent protest proved futile, however, the SNCC decided to ‘turn all of its efforts toward a comprehensive program designed to register Negro voters in the South.’ They ran into another snag here, however, as some areas of the South were actually refusing to employ African Americans who were, or were trying to, register to vote. In order to combat this, the SNCC worked with various other civil rights organizations to procure food, clothing and other supplies for people in this situation.

Meanwhile, the Northern Student Movement was also doing its part in the North (obviously) to ‘confront the challenge of discrimination.’ Originally founded in New England, it was actually made up of over 50 different organizations from various Northern colleges and universities, including our very own Harpur’s Civil Rights Club (SUNY-Binghamton was called Harpur College until 1965). The NSM was responsible for desegregating three towns on the eastern shore of Maryland and for organizing summer tutorial programs in Harlem and Philadelphia.