SSOC meaning in Community ?

Answer: What is Southern Student Organizing Committee mean?

The Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) was a student activist group in the southern United States during the 1960s, which focused on many political and social issues including: African-American civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, worker's rights, and feminism. It was intended, in part, to be SDS for Southerners and SNCC for white students – at a time when it was dangerous for SDS to attempt to organize in the Deep South and when SNCC was starting to discuss expelling white volunteers. It was felt that students at the traditionally white and black colleges in the South could be more effectively organized separately than in an integrated student civil rights organization; however, this was controversial and initially opposed by advisors like Anne Braden. Sue Thrasher and Archie Allen of the Christian Action Fellowship were among the founders of the group, with the support of Bob Moses and others. At its inception, the group had close ties to controversial Louisville, Kentucky radicals Carl and Anne Braden and their organization, the Southern Conference Education Fund, but a deliberate effort was later made to put some distance between the SSOC and the Bradens to avoid the appearance that the SSOC was a Communist front.

After its founding, SSOC came to be formally tied to the SDS as a fraternal organization with a regional mandate in the South, and joint SDS-SSOC chapters existed at some schools like the University of North Carolina. A monthly organ, The New South Student, was published on a regular basis. In 1967, SSOC organizers led by Gene Guerrero and Lynn Wells, worked with TWUA on a unionization drive in North Carolina textile mills, involving more than 300 students in the campaign. In 1968, Gene Guerrero and Howard Romaine were among the SSOC activists involved in founding Atlanta's widely circulated underground newspaper, The Great Speckled Bird.

SSOC considered itself a distinctly Southern organization and sometimes embraced traditional Confederate symbols and language. In 1968, SSOC staged a series of antiwar protests called "Southern Days of Secession," in which they urged Southerners to "secede" from the Vietnam War. The SSOC button was a Confederate flag with black and white hands shaking in front of it. The hands were modeled on a handshake between SSOC organizer Archie Allen and SNCC chairman John Lewis. It was designed by an artist on the SNCC staff, Claude Weaver.

SSOC had an extensive literature program, printing thousands of copies of pamphlets on civil rights, the Vietnam war, poverty and campus reform that were sold on campus literature tables across the south. The bestseller was entitled "Vietnam: The Myth and Reality of American Policy." During the school year, it published a monthly magazine called The New South Student. One of the magazine's features was a series called "The Roots of Southern Radicalism", which featured stories on historic predecessors of SSOC back to slave revolts, the American revolution, the abolition movement, the Populists, the union organizing drives of the 1930s, and institutions and organizations like Highlander Center, Koinonia Farms, and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. SSOC also organized a conference in Atlanta on Radical Southern History.

SSOC had four chairmen during its five-year history: Gene Guerrero, Howard Romaine, Steve Wise, and Tom Gardner. During its last year, it changed the post to two secretaries, Mike Welch and Lyn Wells, and added a newspaper called The Phoenix, to SSOC's list of publications.

SSOC leased the historic camp at Buckeye Cove in Swannanoa, North Carolina from the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen and held many conferences there. SSOC conferences had a variety of topics but were a way for southern activists, who often felt isolated on the conservative and largely segregated campuses of the time to meet like-minded students from other places and draw strength and inspiration from their activities.

Through a traveling teach-in on Vietnam and American foreign policy that toured southern states between 1967 and 1969, SSOC helped to organize the antiwar movement in the south. The appearance of SSOC delegations at national antiwar marches always resulted in enthusiastic applause.

For some Southern schools, even though SSOC had a presence, the numbers were so small in comparison to the size of the student bodies that it could not gain traction as anything but protest theatre. For example, SSOC organizers came to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, connected with a few individuals and left buttons and flyers with them and then departed. Of the 26,000 students on campus, only about ten were recruited.

Early in 1969 these individuals gathered in a highly resonant hallway and staged an "organizational meeting". On audiotape it sounded like hundreds were attending and a motion was made to follow SDS's exampl reference

Full Form	Category
Southern Students Organizing Committee	Academic & Science
SIPA Students of Color	Academic & Science
Southern Student Organizing Committee	Community
State Schools of Character	Community
School Sport Organising Committees	Community
School Sports Organising Crew	Community
Schools Sports Organising Crew	Community
Supplemental Statement of Case	General
Supplemental Statement of the Case	General
Singapore Standard Occupational Classification	General
Slawson Southeast Occupational Center	General
Standard Spiritualist and Occult Corpus	General
Seniors Serving Oregon Coalition	General
Supplemental Statements of the Case	General
Sun Sensor on the Chip	General
Student Success and Opportunity Center	General
Special Security Officer Course	General
Sun Sensor on a Chip	General
South Side Office of Concern	General
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl	General
Suzuki Sport Owners Club	General
Swift Sport Owners Club	General
Super Sport Owners Club	General
Sports Science Orthopaedic Clinic	Medical
Surgical Specialists of Colorado	Medical