This white paternalism was described most memorably by SNCC veteran and historian Julian Bond, when he barbed: “Rosa [Parks] sat down, Martin [Luther King] stood up, and the white kids came down and saved the day.” Yes, white students did come south to work in the movement, most famously in Freedom Summer: but they learned more than they taught, and what they learned, they carefully and passionately took back to their home communities. The civil rights movement, then, taught the whole New Left– sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly– how to organize for “freedom now.”
– Rebellion in Black and White: Southern Student Activism in the 1960s (2013) edited by Robert Cohen, David J. Snyder