ABSTRACT
King's arrest in September 1958 demonstrated that although he could mix with national and international dignitaries, back in his home state and in much of the South the white population considered him public enemy number one. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC's) first campaign was an attempt to expand the Montgomery bus boycott model of protest to other cities. Faced with this setback, the SCLC shifted its focus to what it thought would be the more promising endeavour of voter registration. The SCLC's second campaign, however, proved little more successful than the first. For the early part of its life, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC's) headquarters was 'squeezed in one corner of the SCLC office' in Atlanta. Some, such as SNCC chair Charles McDew, advocated switching the organisation's attention to voter-registration campaigns and building upon the work already started by activists like Robert Moses in Mississippi.
