The classic memoir by Cleveland Sellers that offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into his volunteer work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1960s civil rights movement.
Among histories of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, there are few personal narratives that are as compelling and insightful as The River of No Return. Besides being an insider’s account of the rise and fall of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), this riveting memoir is an eyewitness report of the strategies and the conflicts in the crucial battle zones as the fight for racial justice raged across the South.
Tracing SNCC volunteer Cleveland Sellers’ zealous commitment to activism from the time of the sit-ins, demonstrations, and freedom rides in the early ’60s, this fascinating narrative encompasses the Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964), the historic march in Selma, the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, and the murders of civil rights activists in Mississippi. Sellers also recounts the turbulent history of the SNCC and tells the powerful story of his own dedication to the cause of civil rights and social change.
The River of No Return has become a standard text for those wishing to perceive the civil rights struggle from within the ranks of one of its key organizations and to note the divisive history of the movement as groups striving for common goals were embroiled in conflict and controversy.
In 1962, at the age of seventeen, Cleveland Sellers joined the Nonviolent Action Group, an affiliate of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Sellers had grown up in Denmark, South Carolina, in a comfortable, middle-class home; now, working with SNCC, his eyes were opened to the full depth of the struggle against white oppression. Soon Sellers, along with Stokely Carmichael, had become a top official in the organization, and played a key role in SNCC’s Freedom Summer in 1964.
The River of No Return is both the story of one young man’s journey, and an insider’s account of the civil rights movement. Sellers writes of the early sit-ins coordinated by SNCC; of the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by the Ku Klux Klan; the Selma Campaign; the Meredith march; and the many other key events of these tumultuous years. Through his eyes we see the birth of Black Power, and then, ultimately, the fragmentation of the movement and the demise of SNCC after the departure of Carmichael. Intertwined with Sellers’s personal story are intimate portraits of the others who helped build the movement, among them Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael, John Lewis, and Bob Moses.
A classic memoir of civil rights, organizing, and the struggle for black identity, The River of No Return is as timely today as it was when it was first published in 1973.
