The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) would have achieved little without their Friends. In 1960, lunch counter sit-ins and freedom rides placed SNCC in the national spotlight. By 1963, regional offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Washington, DC represented the organization’s growth and maturity. College students returning from Freedom Summer—a national call led by SNCC to assist in voter mobilization across the South—brought militant grassroots tactics to the stuffy corridors of their college campuses. To put it simply, SNCC metamorphosed from an assemblage of goodhearted teens with a desire to create societal change into an internationally admired, multitiered civil rights organization. However, SNCC’s growth and impact wouldn’t have been possible without Friends of SNCC (FOSNCC). FOSNCC was responsible for conducting “support work,” which included organizing emergency fundraisers, planning events, implementing publicity campaigns, and ensuring that federal officials knew when local governments were abusing their power. The most prominent Friends of SNCC chapters—New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Chicago and Detroit—were the “northern support” network. Betty Garman Robinson, a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley and the Northern Coordinator of FOSNCC in 1964, wrote a memo explaining that it was their responsibility “to pressure the Justice Department and the President by sending letters and telegrams,…and by getting people in their area with influence to speak out about what is happening in the South.” Demonstrations that were covered in mainstream newspapers were largely due to the support work conducted by volunteers.
In California’s Bay Area, SNCC Field Secretary Charles “Chuck” McDew recruited Mike Miller, who was known for his work with the Student Committee for Agricultural Labor in Northern California. McDew quickly recognized Miller’s savvy coordination skills and knack for communicating the importance of SNCC’s advocacy in the deep south to the Bay Area constituency. Miller became responsible for generating publicity, fundraising, and network building with like-minded organizations. Supporters of the black freedom struggle rarely received a clear report from the mainstream press as to the ways women and working-class individuals were transforming the country through non-violent action. Nor were supporters able to receive regular updates on how the organization was evolving in real time. To bridge the communication divide, Miller recruited Terry Cannon, a twenty-four-year-old journalist who previously helped Miller launch a community-organizing project in San Francisco’s Fillmore district. As partners and supporters of SNCC, Miller and Cannon birthed an informational publication titled “Bay Area Friends of SNCC Newsletter.” The newsletter provided subscribers with updates about the national organization, but most pointedly it disseminated detailed accounts of demonstrations from organizers in the field.