Struggle for a Better South: The Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964-1969

Struggle for a Better South: The Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964-1969. By Gregg L. Michel. (New York: Palgrave, 2004. xii, 324 pp. $39.95, ISBN 1-4039-6010-0.)

Gregg L. Michel chronicles the brief history of the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), a group founded on the premise that white southern students might have an advantage in organizing white southerners for progressive causes. Although early efforts to win white support for civil rights, such as the SSOC's "White Folks Project," a counterpart to Freedom Summer, failed, Michel argues that the SSOC did win more student support on predominantly white southern campuses than either the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Initially focused on civil rights, the SSOC became a multi-issue organization, with affiliates protesting the Vietnam War, challenging in Loco parentis laws, partnering with labor...