Source: Recommendations Passed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, October 14–16, 1960, Wisconsin Historical Society, Civil Rights Collection, Braden Papers, Box 62, Folder 2, Conference, 1960. The “Recommendations” from October 1960 contains the statement of purpose reproduced here, followed by this note: “This statement of purpose was adopted in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 17, 1960, at the close of the first general conference of student movement participants.”
We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and the manner of our action. Nonviolence as it grows from Judaic-Christian traditions seeks a social order of justice permeated by love. Integration of human endeavor represents the crucial first step toward such a society.
Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope ends despair. Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt. Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for all overthrows injustice. The redemptive community supercedes systems of gross social immorality.
Love is the central motif of nonviolence. Love is the force by which Go binds man to Himself and man to man. Such love goes to the extreme; it remains loving and forgiving even in the midst of hostility. It matches the capacity of evil to inflict suffering with an even more enduring capacity to absorb evil, all the while persisting in love.
By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities.
