What was freedom summer 1964

For four years, black civil rights activists in Mississippi had been harassed, beaten, shot, and imprisoned; and blacks who helped them had been fired from their jobs, evicted, arrested, beaten, and killed. What for? Trying to exercise a right the Constitution entrusted Congress to protect. Yet for four years, the federal government had done almost nothing to protect SNCC workers and black Mississippians. Moses and SNCC activists knew a surge of earnest white volunteers from middle and upper class backgrounds, a majority of whom attended elite universities, would attract national media attention that would follow them south, making it more difficult for the federal government to pretend nothing was happening.

Moses made another calculation, a grim one: violence against privileged young white men and women was far more likely to bring federal protection than continued violence against African Americans. Such intervention might finally bring the necessary action to force Mississippi to recognize black voting rights.

Not that SNCC wanted sacrificial lambs. Glory-seekers were rejected; so too, anyone who seemed resistant to accepting instructions from an African American. Showing interest in interracial dating was an immediate disqualification. The volunteers learned the ABCs of safety, Mississippi-style. Never travel alone. Never stand in a doorway with a light behind you. In this collection of video segments from Iowans Return to Freedom Summer, participants reflect on their experiences during this historic period.

Foner Thomas Freedom Summer Papers more The collection documents his work with the project and contains substantial information about the conditions faced by volunteers during the summer. Curriculum guides are also available. The Freedom Summer: Mississippi in more The audio starts with a recording of a teacher in one of the Freedom Schools set up to help bring a better education to the young black children and black adults in rural areas of Mississippi.

Tannehill talks about the blacks in Mississippi registering to vote Freedom Summer AV Collection more Freedom Summer Wisconsin Historical Society more In them you will find official records of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC and Congress of Racial Equality CORE ; the personal papers of movement leaders and activists such as Amzie Moore, Mary King and Howard Zinn, letters and diaries of northern college students who went South to volunteer for the summer; newsletters produced in Freedom Schools; racist propaganda, newspaper clippings, pamphlets and brochures, magazine articles, telephone call logs, candid snapshots, internal memos, press releases and much more.

The digital collection will continue to grow as more manuscripts are added in coming months. All the summer volunteers were urged to write frequent letters to family, friends, teachers, and ministers about the Freedom Movement and their experiences. Many volunteers arranged to have their letters published in local newspapers, school or church bulletins, or reproduced and distributed to informal networks.

This was before the era of cheap photocopy machines, so letters had to be retyped with carbon copies, or mimeographed from hand-typed stencils, often by parents who just days or weeks earlier had been desperately pleading with their daughters and sons not to to to Mississippi. Mark Levy Collection Queens College more When SNCC activist Robert Moses launched a voter registration drive in Mississippi in , he confronted a system that regularly used segregation laws and fear tactics to disenfranchise black citizens.

In , he became director of the Council of Federated Organizations , a coalition of organizations led by SNCC that coordinated the efforts of civil rights groups within the state. Letters to prospective volunteers alerted them to conditions in Mississippi, explaining the likelihood of arrest, the need for bond money and subsistence funds, and the requirement that drivers obtain Mississippi licenses for themselves and their cars. Of the approximately 1, volunteers, the majority were white northern college students from middle and upper class backgrounds.

Just one week after the first group of volunteers arrived in Oxford, three civil rights workers were reported missing in Mississippi. James Chaney, a black Mississippian, and two white northerners, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, disappeared while visiting Philadelphia, Mississippi, to investigate the burning of a church. Voter registration was the cornerstone of the summer project.

More agents would come to Mississippi over the next several days, ultimately totaling more than Their names became national news as the search for them began. Throughout July, investigators combed the woods, fields, swamps, and rivers of Mississippi, ultimately finding the remains of eight other Black men. Their murders were tied to the Ku Klux Klan.

This devastating news swept the nation and to this day, their murders are often remembered as an extremely somber, yet pivotal point in the history of the Freedom Summer Project.

We cried a lot. We hugged. We spoke in groups of two and three and four late into the night. Together we joined hands, swayed back and forth, and sang freedom songs until we were hoarse.

Some of the volunteers left, to go home. Several more were removed by terrified parents. Almost all stayed, and then went on to their assignments, mostly in Mississippi, but also in Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama. Mostly, however, we went on with the training. How to do art enrichment with children who had never been to a school with art supplies or teachers. How to teach basic literacy to children whose segregated schools had failed them and to adults who had had little schooling of any sort.

How to cope with voter registrars at county courthouses when they sought to disqualify Negro applicants for registration. Workshops on the philosophy and tactics of non-violent protest; how to protect oneself when assaulted; how to prepare oneself to respond nonviolently to violent provocation and attack; why we were committed to nonviolence as a technique for social change, and why many in SNCC were committed to nonviolence as a way of life.

The national attention the Freedom Summer gained for the Civil Rights Movement— largely due to the murders of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner— helped convince President Johnson and congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of , which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, as well as passing the Voting Rights Act of Some call Freedom Summer one of the most historic and ambitious efforts in the Civil Rights Movement, bringing national attention to the shocking violence and injustice in Mississippi.

Although the events led to positive political action, it is imperative to remember the people behind the Freedom Summer Project; the community of different volunteers that came together in these times of education, times of danger, times of mourning, and times of hope. In the area where so many brave people trained in the fight against violence, mourned the loss of fellow volunteers, and sought to make a difference, it became important to the Oxford community to construct a memorial commemorating the people and the place that impacted Freedom Summer.

Dedicated in , a stone monument was built on the grassy hills of Miami's Western Campus, where the Western College for Women once stood. The memorial can be seen around the side of Kumler Chapel, alongside an Ohio Historical Marker, and three trees that were planted to honor the lives of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman.

Engraved in the back of each stone panel are headlines and bits of information, representing a chronology of events as depicted by newspapers around the country in The memorial in its entirety can be greatly described as a solemn experience in layers of legacy.