Amid the escalation of radical political activity and state repression, the organizational splits and factional infighting of 1969, few noticed when a hundred students and activists voted overwhelmingly to dissolve the Southern Student Organizing Committee (ssoc, pronounced "sock") at a June meeting in Mississippi. A stepchild of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), sso¢ had seldom attracted attention outside of the South, only occasionally winning an aside in books and articles about the New Left. It died as it had lived--in relative obscurity. During its five-year existence, ssoc accomplished a seemingly impossible task: the establishment of a white radical movement in this bastion of reactionary politics. Because of its efforts, many white southern students participated in civil rights action, student power struggles, community and labor organizing, and women's liberation and anti&aft and antiwar work. ssoe chapters were formed at such diverse schools as Georgia Tech, Lynchburg College, The University of Virginia, Millsaps, Furman, Emory and Davidson. While some lasted only a year, others endured. With 42 staff members covering every Deep South state in 1969, ssoe's future seemed assured. Yet only three months after being censured by SDS, the organization collapsed. In February the SDS National Council voted to sever long-standing fraternal ties, citing ssoc's liberalism, its reliance on foundation support and its southern exceptionalism and use of the Confederate flag. Despite its rapid expansion, ssoc could offer only a feeble defense, lacking the membership support and the political ability to withstand the sDs attack. Convinced of the validity of sns's critique, several of SSOC'S most effective organizers led the fight to dissolve the organization. Even