Freedom Summer
Encyclopedia
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States
launched in June 1964 to attempt to register
as many African American
voters as possible in Mississippi
which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations
(COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC
, CORE
, NAACP
and SCLC
). Most of the impetus, leadership, and financing for the Summer Project came from the SNCC. Robert Parris Moses
, SNCC field secretary and co-director of COFO, directed the summer project.
Freedom Summer was possible because of years of earlier work by numerous African Americans who lived locally in Mississippi. By 1964, students and others had begun the process of integrating public accommodations, registering adults to vote, and above all organizing a network of local leadership. But recent voting campaigns, including a massive effort in Greenwood and a 1963 Freedom Election that brought students from Stanford and Yale to help distribute non-binding ballots, had been met with whiplash violence. Seeking a new tactic, Moses prevailed over doubts among SNCC and COFO workers, and planning for Freedom Summer began in February 1964. Speakers recruited on college campuses across the country, drawing standing ovations for their dedication in braving the routine violence perpetrated by police, sheriffs, and others in Mississippi. SNCC recruiters interviewed dozens of potential volunteers, weeding out those with a John Brown complex (similar to the perception their job was solely a white man's burden, or that they were in some way superior to those who they were helping), informing others that their job that summer would not be to "save the Mississippi Negro" but to work with local leadership to develop the grassroots movement.
Well over 1,000 out-of-state volunteers participated in Freedom Summer alongside thousands of black Mississippians. Most of the volunteers were young, most of them from the North
, 90 percent were white and many were Jewish. Two one-week orientation sessions for the volunteers were held at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio
(now part of Miami University
), from June 14 to June 27.
Organizers focused on Mississippi because it had the lowest percentage of African Americans registered to vote in the country; in 1962 only 6.7% of eligible black voters were registered.
White officials in the South systematically kept African Americans from being able to vote by charging them expensive poll taxes, forcing them to take especially difficult literacy tests, making the application process inconvenient, harassing would-be voters economically (as by denying crop loans), and carrying out arson, battery, and lynching.
During the ten weeks of Freedom Summer, a number of other organizations provided support for the COFO Summer Project. More than 100 volunteer doctors, nurses, psychologists, medical students and other medical professionals from the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) provided emergency care for volunteers and local activists, taught health education classes, and advocated improvements in Mississippi's segregated health system. Volunteer lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Inc
("Ink Fund"), National Lawyers Guild
, Lawyer's Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC) an arm of the ACLU
, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
(LCCR) provided free legal services — handling arrests, freedom of speech, voter registration and other matters. And the Commission on Religion and Race (CORR), an endeavor of the National Council of Churches
(NCC), brought Christian
and Jewish clergy and divinity students to Mississippi to support the work of the Summer Project. In addition to offering traditional religious support to volunteers and activists, the ministers and rabbi
s engaged in voting rights protests at courthouses, recruited voter applicants and accompanied them to register, taught in Freedom Schools, and performed office and other support functions.
Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and any attempt to change their society. Locals routinely harassed volunteers. Newspapers called them "unshaven and unwashed trash." Their presence in local black communities sparked drive-by shootings, Molotov cocktails, and constant harassment. State and local governments, police, the White Citizens' Council
and the Ku Klux Klan
used murder, arrests, beatings, arson, 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.
Over the course of the ten-week project:
Violence struck the campaign almost as soon as it started. On June 21, 1964, James Chaney
(a black CORE activist from Mississippi), CORE organizer Michael Schwerner
, and summer volunteer Andrew Goodman
(both of whom were Jews from New York
) were arrested by Cecil Price, a Neshoba County
deputy sheriff and member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
. They were held in jail until after nightfall, then released into a waiting ambush by Klansmen who abducted and killed them. Goodman and Schwerner were shot at point-blank range. Chaney was chased, beaten mercilessly, and shot three times. Reported on TV and on newspaper front pages, the triple disappearance shocked the nation and drew massive media attention to Freedom Summer and to "the closed society" of Mississippi.
As soon as the men had turned up missing, SNCC and COFO workers began phoning the FBI asking for an investigation. FBI agents refused, saying it was a local matter. Finally, after some 36 hours, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
ordered an investigation and FBI agents began swarming around Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney had been arrested. For the next seven weeks, FBI agents and sailors from a nearby naval airbase searched for the bodies, wading into swamps, and hacking through underbrush. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
came to Mississippi on July 10 to open the first FBI branch office there.
Throughout the search, Mississippi newspapers and word of mouth perpetuated the common belief that the disappearance was "a hoax" designed to draw publicity. But the search turned up the bodies of eight other black men found in rivers and swamps. One of them, 14-year old Herbert Oarsby, was found wearing a CORE T-shirt. Two others, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, had been expelled from Alcorn A&M
for participating in civil rights protests. The other five men were never identified. On August 4, 1964, the bodies of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were found buried beneath an earthen dam.
, 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
. Though the MFDP challenge had wide support among many convention delegates, Lyndon B. Johnson
feared losing Southern support in the coming campaign and he prevented the MFDP from replacing the regulars.
" – 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.
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.
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:
system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media
had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers, but when the lives of affluent northern white students were threatened the full attention of the media spotlight was turned on the state. This evident disparity between the value that the media placed on the lives of whites and blacks embittered many black activists. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers themselves, almost all of whom – black and white – still consider it one of the defining moments of their lives.
The structure of the civil rights movement remained after Freedom Summer. In September and October, leading up to the November election, a series of repressive events occurred. Nuisance arrests, beatings, and church burnings continued. Long-term volunteers continued to staff the COFO and SNCC offices throughout Mississippi. After the flood of summer workers in 1964, it was decided that projects should continue in the following summer, but under the direction of local leadership. In the following summer, and thereafter, the priorities for action were set by locals.
Among many notable veterans of Freedom Summer were Heather Booth, Marshall Ganz
, and Mario Savio
. After the summer, Heather Booth returned to Illinois, where she became a founder of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union
and later the Midwest Academy
. Marshall Ganz returned to California
and worked for many years on the staff of the United Farm Workers
, later taught organizing strategies, and in 2008 played a crucial role in organizing Barack Obama
's field staff for the campaign
. Mario Savio
returned to the University of California, Berkeley
, where he became a leader of the Free Speech Movement
.
Back in Mississippi, controversy raged over the three murders. Mississippi refused to indict
anyone but the FBI continued to investigate. Agents infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan
and paid informers to reveal secrets of their "klaverns". In the fall of 1964, informants told the FBI all about the murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and on December 4, 19 men were arrested. All were freed on a technicality, starting a three-year battle to bring them to justice. Finally, in October 1967, the men, including the Klan's Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, who had ordered the murders, went on trial in a federal courthouse in Meridian. Seven were ultimately convicted
for federal crimes related to the murders. All were sentenced to 3–10 years but none served more than six years. Still, it marked the first time since Reconstruction that white men had been convicted of civil rights violations in Mississippi.
The nationwide shame created by Freedom Summer continued to haunt Mississippi, even as the state made halting racial progress. Blacks were given the vote in 1965 with the federal Voting Rights Act
but made little progress as Mississippi's legislature passed several laws to dilute the power of their votes. Only with Supreme Court rulings and more than a decade of cooling did black voting become a reality in Mississippi. The seeds planted during Freedom Summer bore fruit in the 1980s and 1990s when Mississippi elected more black officials than any other state. Today, thanks to Freedom Summer and the MFDP, nearly every major city in Mississippi has a black mayor, black city councilmen, black policemen, judges, and other officials.
Further investigation of the Mississippi civil rights workers murders during Freedom Summer finally led to another trial in 2005. As a result of investigative reporting by 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
, one of the leaders of the killings and a former Ku Klux Klan klavern recruiter
, was finally indicted
for murder
and later found guilty
of three counts of manslaughter
. The Killen verdict came on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime. Killen's lawyers appeal
ed the verdict
, but his sentence of 3 times 20 years in prison was upheld on January 12, 2007, in a hearing by the Supreme Court of Mississippi
.
Many who worked in Freedom Summer, however, are not satisfied with the prosecution of Killen. They note that five men convicted in 1967 of civil rights violations stemming from the murders are still living and should be brought to trial for murder. Only when that happens, they say, will Freedom Summer be over.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
launched in June 1964 to attempt to register
Voter registration
Voter registration is the requirement in some democracies for citizens and residents to check in with some central registry specifically for the purpose of being allowed to vote in elections. An effort to get people to register is known as a voter registration drive.-Centralized/compulsory vs...
as many African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
voters as possible in Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations
Council of Federated Organizations
The Council of Federated Organizations was formed in Mississippi in 1962.A coalition of the major Civil Rights Movement organizations operating in Mississippi, COFO was formed to coordinate and unite voter registration and other civil rights activities in the state and oversee the distribution of...
(COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ' was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960...
, CORE
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality or CORE was a U.S. civil rights organization that originally played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement...
, NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
and SCLC
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
). Most of the impetus, leadership, and financing for the Summer Project came from the SNCC. Robert Parris Moses
Robert Parris Moses
Robert Parris Moses is an American, Harvard-trained educator who was a leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and later founded the nationwide U.S. Algebra project.-Biography:...
, SNCC field secretary and co-director of COFO, directed the summer project.
Freedom Summer was possible because of years of earlier work by numerous African Americans who lived locally in Mississippi. By 1964, students and others had begun the process of integrating public accommodations, registering adults to vote, and above all organizing a network of local leadership. But recent voting campaigns, including a massive effort in Greenwood and a 1963 Freedom Election that brought students from Stanford and Yale to help distribute non-binding ballots, had been met with whiplash violence. Seeking a new tactic, Moses prevailed over doubts among SNCC and COFO workers, and planning for Freedom Summer began in February 1964. Speakers recruited on college campuses across the country, drawing standing ovations for their dedication in braving the routine violence perpetrated by police, sheriffs, and others in Mississippi. SNCC recruiters interviewed dozens of potential volunteers, weeding out those with a John Brown complex (similar to the perception their job was solely a white man's burden, or that they were in some way superior to those who they were helping), informing others that their job that summer would not be to "save the Mississippi Negro" but to work with local leadership to develop the grassroots movement.
Well over 1,000 out-of-state volunteers participated in Freedom Summer alongside thousands of black Mississippians. Most of the volunteers were young, most of them from the North
Northern United States
Northern United States, also sometimes the North, may refer to:* A particular grouping of states or regions of the United States of America. The United States Census Bureau divides some of the northernmost United States into the Midwest Region and the Northeast Region...
, 90 percent were white and many were Jewish. Two one-week orientation sessions for the volunteers were held at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio
Oxford, Ohio
Oxford is a city in northwestern Butler County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern portion of the state. It lies in Oxford Township, originally called the College Township. The population was 21,943 at the 2000 census. This college town was founded as a home for Miami University. Oxford...
(now part of Miami University
Miami University
Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...
), from June 14 to June 27.
Organizers focused on Mississippi because it had the lowest percentage of African Americans registered to vote in the country; in 1962 only 6.7% of eligible black voters were registered.
White officials in the South systematically kept African Americans from being able to vote by charging them expensive poll taxes, forcing them to take especially difficult literacy tests, making the application process inconvenient, harassing would-be voters economically (as by denying crop loans), and carrying out arson, battery, and lynching.
During the ten weeks of Freedom Summer, a number of other organizations provided support for the COFO Summer Project. More than 100 volunteer doctors, nurses, psychologists, medical students and other medical professionals from the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) provided emergency care for volunteers and local activists, taught health education classes, and advocated improvements in Mississippi's segregated health system. Volunteer lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Inc
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City....
("Ink Fund"), National Lawyers Guild
National Lawyers Guild
The National Lawyers Guild is an advocacy group in the United States "dedicated to the need for basic and progressive change in the structure of our political and economic system . ....
, Lawyer's Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC) an arm of the ACLU
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under Law, often simply The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights or Lawyers' Committee, is a civil rights organization that was founded in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy.-Origins: 1963-1973:...
(LCCR) provided free legal services — handling arrests, freedom of speech, voter registration and other matters. And the Commission on Religion and Race (CORR), an endeavor of the National Council of Churches
National Council of Churches
The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA is an ecumenical partnership of 37 Christian faith groups in the United States. Its member denominations, churches, conventions, and archdioceses include Mainline Protestant, Orthodox, African American, Evangelical, and historic peace...
(NCC), brought Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
and Jewish clergy and divinity students to Mississippi to support the work of the Summer Project. In addition to offering traditional religious support to volunteers and activists, the ministers and rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
s engaged in voting rights protests at courthouses, recruited voter applicants and accompanied them to register, taught in Freedom Schools, and performed office and other support functions.
Violence
White Citizens' Council
The White Citizens' Council was an American white supremacist organization formed on July 11, 1954. After 1956, it was known as the Citizens' Councils of America...
and the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
used murder, arrests, beatings, arson, 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.
Over the course of the ten-week project:
- four civil rights workers were killed (one in a head-on collision)
- at least three Mississippi blacks were murdered because of their support for the civil rights movement
- four people were critically wounded
- eighty Freedom Summer workers were beaten
- one-thousand and sixty-two people were arrested (volunteers and locals)
- thirty-seven churches were bombed or burned
- thirty Black homes or businesses were bombed or burned
Violence struck the campaign almost as soon as it started. On June 21, 1964, James Chaney
James Chaney
James Earl "J.E." Chaney , from Meridian, Mississippi, was one of three American civil rights workers who were murdered during Freedom Summer by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia...
(a black CORE activist from Mississippi), CORE organizer Michael Schwerner
Michael Schwerner
Michael Henry Schwerner , was one of three Congress of Racial Equality field workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan in response to their civil rights work, which included promoting voting registration among Mississippi African Americans...
, and summer volunteer Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman
Andrew Goodman was one of three American civil rights activists murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, during Freedom Summer in 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan.-Early life and education:...
(both of whom were Jews from New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
) were arrested by Cecil Price, a Neshoba County
Neshoba County, Mississippi
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 28,684 people, 10,694 households, and 7,742 families residing in the county. The population density was 50 people per square mile . There were 11,980 housing units at an average density of 21 per square mile...
deputy sheriff and member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was considered the most militant as well as the most violent Ku Klux Klan in history. They originated in Mississippi in the early 1960s under the leadership of Samuel Bowers, its first Grand Wizard. The White Knights of Mississippi was formed in 1964, and it...
. They were held in jail until after nightfall, then released into a waiting ambush by Klansmen who abducted and killed them. Goodman and Schwerner were shot at point-blank range. Chaney was chased, beaten mercilessly, and shot three times. Reported on TV and on newspaper front pages, the triple disappearance shocked the nation and drew massive media attention to Freedom Summer and to "the closed society" of Mississippi.
As soon as the men had turned up missing, SNCC and COFO workers began phoning the FBI asking for an investigation. FBI agents refused, saying it was a local matter. Finally, after some 36 hours, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
ordered an investigation and FBI agents began swarming around Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney had been arrested. For the next seven weeks, FBI agents and sailors from a nearby naval airbase searched for the bodies, wading into swamps, and hacking through underbrush. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
came to Mississippi on July 10 to open the first FBI branch office there.
Throughout the search, Mississippi newspapers and word of mouth perpetuated the common belief that the disappearance was "a hoax" designed to draw publicity. But the search turned up the bodies of eight other black men found in rivers and swamps. One of them, 14-year old Herbert Oarsby, was found wearing a CORE T-shirt. Two others, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, had been expelled from Alcorn A&M
Alcorn State University
Alcorn State University is an historically black university comprehensive land-grant institution in Lorman, Mississippi. It was founded in 1871-History:...
for participating in civil rights protests. The other five men were never identified. On August 4, 1964, the bodies of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were found buried beneath an earthen dam.
The MFDP
With participation in the regular Mississippi Democratic Party blocked by segregationistsRacial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
, COFO established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was an American political party created in the state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement...
(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
White supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
continued to block black voter registration, the Summer Project switched to building the MFDP
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was an American political party created in the state of Mississippi in 1964, during the civil rights movement...
. Though the MFDP challenge had wide support among many convention delegates, Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
feared losing Southern support in the coming campaign and he prevented the MFDP from replacing the regulars.
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 SchoolsFreedom Schools
Freedom Schools were temporary, alternative free schools for African Americans mostly in the South. They were originally part of a nationwide effort during the Civil Rights Movement to organize African Americans to achieve social, political and economic equality in the United States...
" – 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.
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
Spelman College
Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts women's college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the first historically black female...
professor Staughton Lynd
Staughton Lynd
Staughton Craig Lynd is an American conscientious objector, Quaker, peace activist and civil rights activist, tax resister, historian, professor, author and lawyer. His involvement in social justice causes has brought him into contact with some of the nation's most influential activists, including...
, 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
Parent-Teacher Association
In the U.S. a parent-teacher association or Parent-Teacher-Student Association is a formal organization composed of parents, teachers and staff that is intended to facilitate parental participation in a public or private school. Most public and private K-8 schools in the U.S. have a PTA, a...
.”
The Freedom Schools operated on a basis of close interaction and mutual trust between teachers and students. The core curriculum
Curriculum
See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
focused on basic literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
and arithmetic
Arithmetic
Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. It involves the study of quantity, especially as the result of combining numbers...
, 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.
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..."
Aftermath
Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it had a significant effect on the course of the Civil Rights Movement. It helped break down the decades of isolation and repression that were the foundation of the Jim CrowJim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media
News media (United States)
Mass media are the means through which information is transmitted to a large audience. This includes newspapers, television, radio, and more recently the Internet. Those who provide news and information, and the outlets for which they work, are known as the news media.Some high-quality news media...
had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers, but when the lives of affluent northern white students were threatened the full attention of the media spotlight was turned on the state. This evident disparity between the value that the media placed on the lives of whites and blacks embittered many black activists. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers themselves, almost all of whom – black and white – still consider it one of the defining moments of their lives.
The structure of the civil rights movement remained after Freedom Summer. In September and October, leading up to the November election, a series of repressive events occurred. Nuisance arrests, beatings, and church burnings continued. Long-term volunteers continued to staff the COFO and SNCC offices throughout Mississippi. After the flood of summer workers in 1964, it was decided that projects should continue in the following summer, but under the direction of local leadership. In the following summer, and thereafter, the priorities for action were set by locals.
Among many notable veterans of Freedom Summer were Heather Booth, Marshall Ganz
Marshall Ganz
Marshall Ganz is a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He worked on the staff of the United Farm Workers for sixteen years before becoming a trainer and organizer for political campaigns, unions and nonprofit groups...
, and Mario Savio
Mario Savio
""...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be - have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean - Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone!...
. After the summer, Heather Booth returned to Illinois, where she became a founder of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union
Chicago Women's Liberation Union
The Chicago Women's Liberation Union was a women's liberation organization based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The organization served as an umbrella organization for numerous groups who worked within communities nationwide to bring awareness, programming and opportunities to women...
and later the Midwest Academy
Midwest Academy
The Midwest Academy is a community organizer training institute committed to "advancing the struggle for social, economic, and racial justice," founded in 1973 and based in Chicago, Illinois, USA. From local neighborhood groups to statewide and national organizations, Midwest Academy has trained...
. Marshall Ganz returned to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
and worked for many years on the staff of the United Farm Workers
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...
, later taught organizing strategies, and in 2008 played a crucial role in organizing Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
's field staff for the campaign
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
. Mario Savio
Mario Savio
""...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be - have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean - Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone!...
returned to the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he became a leader of the Free Speech Movement
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
.
Back in Mississippi, controversy raged over the three murders. Mississippi refused to indict
Indictment
An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...
anyone but the FBI continued to investigate. Agents infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and paid informers to reveal secrets of their "klaverns". In the fall of 1964, informants told the FBI all about the murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, and on December 4, 19 men were arrested. All were freed on a technicality, starting a three-year battle to bring them to justice. Finally, in October 1967, the men, including the Klan's Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, who had ordered the murders, went on trial in a federal courthouse in Meridian. Seven were ultimately convicted
Conviction
In law, a conviction is the verdict that results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime.The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal . In Scotland and in the Netherlands, there can also be a verdict of "not proven", which counts as an acquittal...
for federal crimes related to the murders. All were sentenced to 3–10 years but none served more than six years. Still, it marked the first time since Reconstruction that white men had been convicted of civil rights violations in Mississippi.
The nationwide shame created by Freedom Summer continued to haunt Mississippi, even as the state made halting racial progress. Blacks were given the vote in 1965 with the federal Voting Rights Act
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....
but made little progress as Mississippi's legislature passed several laws to dilute the power of their votes. Only with Supreme Court rulings and more than a decade of cooling did black voting become a reality in Mississippi. The seeds planted during Freedom Summer bore fruit in the 1980s and 1990s when Mississippi elected more black officials than any other state. Today, thanks to Freedom Summer and the MFDP, nearly every major city in Mississippi has a black mayor, black city councilmen, black policemen, judges, and other officials.
Further investigation of the Mississippi civil rights workers murders during Freedom Summer finally led to another trial in 2005. As a result of investigative reporting by Jerry Mitchell (an award-winning reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger), high school
Secondary education in the United States
In most jurisdictions, secondary education in the United States refers to the last six or seven years of statutory formal education. Secondary education is generally split between junior high school or middle school, usually beginning with sixth or seventh grade , and high school, beginning with...
teacher Barry Bradford, and three students from Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
(Brittany Saltiel, Sarah Siegel, and Allison Nichols), Edgar Ray Killen
Edgar Ray Killen
Edgar Ray "Preacher" Killen is a former Ku Klux Klan organizer who conspired in the murders of three civil rights activists—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner—in 1964....
, one of the leaders of the killings and a former Ku Klux Klan klavern recruiter
Kleagle
A Kleagle is an officer of the Ku Klux Klan whose main role is to recruit new members.-Kleagles:*Edgar Ray Killen, a Mississippi Klansman long suspected of involvement in a notorious civil rights movement murder that were the subject of the movie Mississippi Burning...
, was finally indicted
Indictment
An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...
for murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
and later found guilty
Conviction
In law, a conviction is the verdict that results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime.The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal . In Scotland and in the Netherlands, there can also be a verdict of "not proven", which counts as an acquittal...
of three counts of manslaughter
Manslaughter
Manslaughter is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is said to have first been made by the Ancient Athenian lawmaker Dracon in the 7th century BC.The law generally differentiates...
. The Killen verdict came on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime. Killen's lawyers appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....
ed the verdict
Verdict
In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. The term, from the Latin veredictum, literally means "to say the truth" and is derived from Middle English verdit, from Anglo-Norman: a compound of ver and dit In law, a verdict...
, but his sentence of 3 times 20 years in prison was upheld on January 12, 2007, in a hearing by the Supreme Court of Mississippi
Supreme Court of Mississippi
The Supreme Court of Mississippi is the highest court in the state of Mississippi. It was created in the first constitution of the state following its admission as a State of the Union in 1817. Initially it was known as the "High Court of Errors and Appeals." The Court is an appellate court, as...
.
Many who worked in Freedom Summer, however, are not satisfied with the prosecution of Killen. They note that five men convicted in 1967 of civil rights violations stemming from the murders are still living and should be brought to trial for murder. Only when that happens, they say, will Freedom Summer be over.
External links
- http://www.booktv.org/Watch/11608/Freedom+Summer+The+Savage+Season+That+Made+Mississippi+Burn+and+Made+America+a+Democracy.aspx - C-SPAN Book TV Webcast of author Bruce Watson discussing his book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy. Watson is accompanied by Freedom Summer volunteer Chris Williams discussing his work in Mississippi in 1964.
- Freedom Summer Digital Collection - Miami University of Ohio
- Freedom Summer National Conference - 2009 - Miami University of Ohio
- Mississippi Burning (LBJ tapes and documents) - University of Virginia
- Freedom Summer, Mississippi 1964 ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
- Freedom On My Mind a documentary distributed by California NewsreelCalifornia NewsreelCalifornia Newsreel, founded in 1968, is an American non-profit, social justice film distribution and production company based in San Francisco, California. Their educational media resources include both documentary and feature films, with a focus on the advancement of racial justice and diversity...
- Photos of Freedom Summer ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans
- "We had Sneakers, They Had Guns,". Webcast and event flier essay from the Library of CongressLibrary of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, American Folklife CenterAmerican Folklife CenterThe American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife" . The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American folk music...
, May 5, 2009 lecture. Illustrator and journalist Tracy Sugarman describes his experiences covering the voting registration efforts during the 1964 "Freedom Summer." The talk is related to the publication of Sugarman's book of the same title. Retrieved August 25, 2009. - Mississippi & Freedom Summer - The Civil Rights Movements of the 1960s
- 1964: Freedom Summer - University of Southern Mississippi
- Oh Freedom Over Me - American RadioWorks
- http://cdm.lib.usm.edu/cdm4/results.php?CISORESTMP=results.php&CISOVIEWTMP=item_viewer.php&CISOMODE=grid&CISOGRID=thumbnail,A,1;title,A,1;creato,A,0;relati,200,0;none,A,0;20;title,creato,none,none,none&CISOBIB=title,A,1,N;creato,A,0,N;relati,200,0,N;none,A,0,N;none,A,0,N;20;title,creato,none,none,none&CISOTHUMB=20%20(4x5);title,none,none,none,none&CISOTITLE=20;title,none,none,none,none&CISOHIERA=20;title,creato,none,none,none&CISOSUPPRESS=1&CISOTYPE=link&CISOOP1=exact&CISOFIELD1=relatia&CISOBOX1=Civil+Rights&CISOOP2=exact&CISOFIELD2=subjec&CISOBOX2=&CISOOP3=exact&CISOFIELD3=descri&CISOBOX3=&CISOOP4=exact&CISOFIELD4=CISOSEARCHALL&CISOBOX4=&c=exact&CISOROOT=allMississippi Digital Library] Original photographs, documents oral history, letters from the Mississippi freedom movement
- The 1964 MS Freedom School Curriculum ~ Education and Democracy