Mississippi Freedom Summer 1964

The Right to Vote and the Impact Upon the Civil Rights Movement

Georgia Performance StandardU.S. History

SSUSH24 The Student will analyze the impact of social change movements and organizations of the 1960’s. Compare and Contrast Student Non-Violent Coordinating

Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) tactics; include sit-ins, and changing composition.

Essential Questions Why did the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) decide to sponsor Freedom Summer 1964 in the state of Mississippi?

What strategies did Freedom summer use to encourage black voter registration amongst black Mississippians?

Why did the sponsoring committee’s want/need the help of northern white college students?

Why did many black helpers within the Freedom Summer Movement resent the help from the northern white college students?

Why and how is the Democratic Convention of 1965 in Atlantic City, New Jersey considered a victory for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party?

Overview of Freedom Summer

Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South during the summer of 1964. Their goal was to register blacks to vote.

More Overview…

Blacks had been kept from voting in the south, despite the passage of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 1870.

Freedom Summer marked the climax of an intensive voter-registration drive that has started in 1961.

The efforts were focused on Mississippi because of the state’s poor voting record.

The Freedom Summer Movement was organized by the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations (MCFO).

The MCFO consulted many other organizations to help with the Freedom Summer project:

1. Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)2. Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee (SNCC)3. National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (NAACP)4. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

Overview Continued Lack of equality in the educational

system was also brought into focus during the campaign with the organization of “Freedom Schools”.

Freedom Summer activists and volunteers faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign. There were bombings, arrests, and other forms of violence.

Despite the difficulties and violence faced during the campaign, there were many positive outcomes.

Freedom Summer: The Beginning

In the 1960’s, 86 percent of all non-white families lived below the poverty-line in Mississippi, and the state was known for poor voting record amongst blacks.

In the 1950’s, Mississippi had a black population of 45%, and only 5% of the black population were registered voters.

Even though black males knew of the 15th amendment they were deterred from voting in Mississippi because of poll taxes, literacy tests, threats, and public violence.

Freedom Summer: The Goal… In the late 1950’s, the NAACP went to Mississippi in an effort

to register more blacks to vote. Amzie Moore, a local NAACP leader in Mississippi, met with

SNCC worker Robert Moses while Moses was traveling through the state in July of 1960.

The following summer the SNCC organized a month long registration education program in the town of McComb, teaching a weekly class that showed people how to register.

In 1962 SNCC, CORE, SCLC and other groups got together to organize the Freedom Vote. They were able to establish two main goals:

1.  To show Mississippi whites and the nation that blacks wanted to vote, and 2. To give blacks, many of whom had never voted, practice in casting a ballot.

Freedom Summer: The Campaign

After the success of the Freedom Vote, SNCC decided to send volunteers to Mississippi during the summer of 1964.

. Bob Moses, one of the organizers, outlined the goals of Freedom Summer to prospective volunteers at Stanford University:

1.      to expand black voter registration in the state of Mississippi2.      to organize a legally constituted “Freedom Democratic Party” that would challenge the whites-only Mississippi Democratic Party.3.      to establish “freedom schools” to teach reading and math to black children 4. to open community centers where indigent blacks could obtain legal medical assistance

Groups Involved: CORE

The Congress of Racial Equality was founded in 1942 as the Committee of Racial Equality by an interracial group of students in Chicago.

By the end of 1961, CORE had 53 affiliated chapters, and remained active in southern civil rights activities.

In 1964, CORE participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project. 3 of their members, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were brutally murdered that summer, resulting in an infamous case.  

Groups Involved: NAACP The National Association for the Advancement

of Colored People was established in 1909.

With the help of other civil rights groups, they worked to end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South.

They were instrumental in establishing Freedom Schools, and pressing for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Groups Involved: SNCC The Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee was a political organization formed in 1960 by black college students.

In 1964 SNCC helped create Freedom Summer, an effort to register blacks to vote and focus national attention on Mississippi’s racism.

An estimated 600 young people, many of them white college students, volunteered to travel to the south to help with the project.

Groups Involved: SCLC

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was established in 1957, and formed the backbone of the civil rights movement during the 1950’s and 1960’s.

SCLC volunteers helped with the Freedom Summer campaign, and they organized a march that created support for the Voting Rights Act if 1965.  

Freedom Summer: Violence and Murder…

During Freedom Summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed.

White mobs or racist police beat over 80 civil rights volunteers.

One of the most infamous cases of violence that occurred during Freedom Summer was the murder of 3 volunteers.

Violence and Murder Cont’d…

On June 21, 1964 -Three volunteers were asked to investigate the site of a church that had been burned in Philadelphia.

The 3 men had been arrested for speeding and released from jail later that evening.

Their bodies were found on August 4, all three had been murdered – James Chaney (African-American) had been beaten before being murdered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wqG5QUm4So&feature=related

Freedom Schools One of the goals of the Freedom Summer

campaign was to establish “freedom schools” to teach reading, math, and black history to black children.

CORE, SNCC, and NAACP were able to establish 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi.

Volunteers from the various groups were recruited to teach in the schools, and convey the nonviolent message of the civil rights movement.

Freedom Schools: Violence…

Freedom Schools were often the target of racism and violence. The following poem was written by Joyce Brown, a 16 year old girl who attended a Freedom School in McComb, Mississippi:

In a bombed house I have to teach my schoolBecause I believe all men should liveBy the Golden Rule.To a bombed house your children must come, Because of your fear of a bomb,And because you’ve let your fear conquer your soul,In this bombed house these minds I must try to mould.I must try to teach them to stand tall and be a man,When you’re their parents have coweredDown and refused to take a stand.  

Taken from the Bay Area Friends of SNCC Newsletter, January 1965

Freedom Schools: Purpose…

The school project was proposed by a Howard University student by the name of Charles Cobb.

His purpose was “to create an educational experience for students which will make it possible for them to challenge the myths of our society, to perceive more clearly its realities, and to find alternatives .”

Freedom Schools: Education…

The schools offered not only academic courses, but an exposure to a totally new field of learning for the black youth.

They were exposed to new attitudes, new people, and a new use of their imagination.

At the end of the Mississippi Freedom Summer project, the Freedom Schools continued.

The schools became an instrumental aid in enabling students to make a transition from a Mississippi Negro high school to higher education.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party: MFDP

The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was a major focus of the summer program.

More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a group of 68 delegates to the national Democratic Party convention.

The MFDP wanted to challenge the all white delegation, and help integrate the party and bring African-American delegates to power.

MFDP: Fannie Lou Hamer…

She was born and raised in Mississippi, and had been brutally beaten by white men throughout her life.

She became the spokesman for the MFDP while the party was in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Afraid America would hear her speech, and side with the MFDP, President Johnson asked for a televised press conference in order to stop coverage of the hearing.

Legislation Passed: The Civil Rights Act of 1964…

President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in July of that year.

1. it gave federal government the right to end segregation in the South 2. it prohibited segregation in public places. 3. an Equal Employment Commission was created. 4. federal funding would not be given to segregated schools (note that these had been banned in 1954, ten years previous!) 5. any company that wanted federal business (the biggest spender of money in American business) had to have a pro-civil rights charter.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

President sent the Voting Rights Bill to Congress, and it was signed into law on August 6, 1965.

This empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration and elections in counties that had tests to determine voter eligibility or where registration/turnout had been less than 50% in the 1964 election.

The law banned discriminatory literacy tests and expanded voting rights for non-English speaking Americans.