The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of Sncc

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.