Freedom Summer
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Freedom Summer (also known as the Mississippi Summer Project) was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register to vote as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, which up to that time had almost totally excluded black voters. The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) which was an umbrella of four established civil rights organizations: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), with SNCC playing the lead role. Over 1,000, mostly young, people volunteered, most of them northern whites, many of them Jewish, interested in helping out the civil rights cause. Two one-week orientation sessions for the volunteers were held at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, from June 14 to June 27.[1]
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[edit] Violence
Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and any attempt to change their society. State and local governments, police, the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan used murder, arrests, beatings, arson, rape, spying, firing, evictions, and other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or achieving social equality.[2]
Violence struck the campaign almost as soon as it started. On June 21, 1964, James Chaney (a black volunteer from Mississippi), and CORE organizer Michael Schwerner and summer volunteer Andrew Goodman (both of whom were Jews from New York) were abducted, tortured, and killed by Klansmen from Philadelphia, Mississippi. The volunteers' badly beaten bodies were found several months later buried in an earthen dam.
Mississippi refused to investigate or indict anyone for the murders. After a year, seven men were tried and convicted after a year for minor federal crimes related to the murders, but few served time in jail; none more than four years.
As a result of investigative reporting by journalist Jerry Mitchell (an award winning reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger), high school teacher Barry Bradford, and three students from Illinois (Brittany Saltiel, Sarah Siegel, and Allison Nichols), Edgar Ray Killen, the organizer of the killings, was finally indicted for murder and found guilty of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime. He appealed the verdict, but his punishment of 3 times 20 years in prison was upheld on January 12, 2007, in a hearing by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
[edit] The MFDP
Initially, Freedom Summer volunteers tried to register black voters using the official process of going to the courthouse, filling out the state voter application, and taking the infamous Literacy test. SNCC and COFO had hoped that the glare of national publicity focused on the volunteers would deter Mississippi from blocking black voting rights. But of the 17,000 Mississippi blacks who attempted to become registered voters, only 1,600 (less than 10%) succeeded.
With participation in the regular Mississippi Democratic Party blocked by segregationists, COFO established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as a non-exclusionary rival to the regular party organization with the intention of having the MFDP recognized by the national Democratic Party as the legitimate party organization in Mississippi.
When the forces of white supremacy continued to block black voter registration, the Summer Project switched to building the MFDP, using a simple, alternate, process of signing up party supporters that did not require blacks to openly defy whites by trying to register at the courthouse. By summer's end more than 80,000 blacks had joined the MFDP.[3]
At the Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey in August, the integrated, democraticially-elected MFDP delegation tried to unseat the white-only delegation from Mississippi. Though the MFDP challenge had wide support among many convention delegates, Lyndon Johnson feared losing Southern support in the coming campaign and he prevented the MFDP from replacing the regulars.
[edit] Freedom Schools
In addition to voter registration and the MFDP, the Summer Project also established a network 30 to 40 voluntary summer schools — called "Freedom Schools" — as an alternative to Mississippi's totally segregated and underfunded school system. Over the course of the summer, more than 3,500 students attended Freedom Schools which taught subjects that the public schools avoided such as black history and constitutional rights.[4]
Freedom Schools were held in churches, on back porches, and under the trees of Mississippi. Students ranged from small children to elderly adults, with the average age around 15. Most of the volunteer teachers were college students. Under the direction of Spelman College professor Staughton Lynd, the goal was to teach confidence, voter literacy, and political organization skills as well as academic skills. The curriculum was directly linked to the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. As Edwin King, who ran for Lieutenant Governor on the MFDP ticket, stated, “Our assumption was that the parents of the Freedom School children, when we met them at night, that the Freedom Democratic Party would be the PTA.”
The Freedom Schools operated on a basis of close interaction and mutual trust between teachers and students. The core curriculum focused on basic literacy and arithmetic, black history and current status, political processes, civil rights, and the freedom movement. But the actual content varied from place to place and day to day according to the questions and interests of the students.[5]
The volunteer Freedom School teachers were as profoundly affected by their experience as were the students. Pam Parker, a teacher in the Holly Springs school, wrote about of experience:
"The atmosphere in the class is unbelievable. It is what every teacher dreams about — real, honest enthusiasm and desire to learn anything and everything. The girls come to class of their own free will. They respond to everything that is said. They are excited about learning. They drain me of everything that I have to offer so that I go home at night completely exhausted but very happy in spirit..."[6]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), p. 66.
- ^ Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to Vote ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
- ^ Carson, Clayborne (1981). In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Harvard University Press.
- ^ Freedom Summer and Freedom Schools ~Education & Democracy
- ^ Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum ~Education & Democracy
- ^ Mississippi Freedom Summer — 1964 ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
[edit] References
- Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). ISBN 0-19-504367-7
- Susie Erenrich, editor, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (Montgomery, AL: Black Belt Press, 1999). ISBN 1-881320-58-8
- Elizabeth Martnez, editor, Letter from Mississippi (Zephyr Press, 2002). ISBN 0939010712
[edit] External links
- Mississippi Burning (LBJ tapes and documents) - University of Virginia
- Freedom Summer, Mississippi 1964 ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
- Photos of Freedom Summer ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
- Mississippi & Freedom Summer - The Civil Rights Movements of the 1960's
- 1964: Freedom Summer - University of Southern Mississippi
- Oh Freedom Over Me - American RadioWorks
