SNCC emerged in April 1960, as students were leading sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters. Initially committed to Martin Luther King's vision of nonviolent civil disobedience, participants radicalised through the experience of mass mobilisation, police violence, and betrayals from politicians. SNCC became a cauldron of debate, where all the questions of anti-racist strategy were hashed out, from black nationalism to 'non-violence', to the movement's relationship to the Democratic Party.