Sunday Evening with SNCC 1965

Streisand / LIVE 

Sunday Evening with SNCC (1965)

New York Hilton, Grand Ballroom
New York, NY

April 25, 1965
Inside pages of the SNCC program.
Hundreds of people gathered in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton Hotel for a dinner show co-chaired by Mrs. Julie Belafonte and singer Diahann Carroll.

At $100-dollars-a-plate, the dinner and performance raised funds for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The committee participated in activities like registering black voters in Mississippi and were committed to non-violent protest.

Emcees Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando introduced a play (Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By, by Walter Bernstein) which was performed by Diahann Carroll, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Harry Belafonte.  Streisand, who was still on Broadway in Funny Girl, reportedly joined the actors in the play.

In 2014, Barbra Streisand recalled meeting Marlon Brando for the first time at this show: “I remember being on the side of the wings of the theater—I was going to sing ‘Suppertime.’ And I'm trying to find Marlon, to get a look at this guy who I think is the most gorgeous, the most talented human on earth! I feel somebody kissing my back, and it's Marlon Brando—can you imagine? He so threw me, watching me in the wings sing this song that there was noise and I stopped. I normally would never do that. It was like: Marlon Brando watching me in the wings?!”

Jet Magazine reported that “the entire audience stood up and cheered wildly” at the play's finish. The evening raised $125,000 for SNCC.
Photos of Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, James Baldwin, and Diahann Carroll.

End / Sunday SNCC 1965

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