Freedom Summer of 1964

By: Megan Flores

Why were African

Americans treated so poorly back then? Why did they live differently than most people? Some
people may think that they were treated so poorly back then because of their color and how they
presented themselves to the public. Others think it could be about the Jim Crow Laws which
were very unfair to the African Americans at the time. This is a debate that is still in progress of
who is right and who is wrong of why they were treated so poorly. People have been debating
about this topic with no closure with an appropriate answer.

In the early 1960s Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation. 86% of all non-white
families lived below the national poverty line. In an addition that state had a terrible record of
black voting rights violations. In the 1950s the state was 45% black but, only 5% were a
registered voter. Black men knew that if they voted they could get into trouble with some white
men and could possibly lose their job. Surprisingly in 1962 many blacks came over the fear and
went to go register. About 260 blacks in Madison Country waited in line just to get registered.

By the 1960s African American men had already won the right to vote because of the
fifteenth amendment in 1870. Many white citizens knew that because of this amendment they
would have to let them vote as well, with them which they did not really favor with. They also
knew that they would have to live with it for the rest of their lives so they tried to do everything
they could in their reach to try to stop it from growing. Many black men wouldn’t vote because
of intimidation and beatings of other white men. White men insisted that black men did not want
to vote, which was entirely a lie to show that they might be giving them a chance.

Another thing that may have been stopping the African American men to stop voting was
because of the Jim Crow Laws. Those laws by 1877 to the mid-1960s were how almost everyone
in the nation lived especially how the white men treated the black men. The Jim Crow laws
basically stated that black men were never allowed to talk to white men or women unless they
were talked to or they were never allowed to do anything together. Everything for black and
white men and women were always done separately. If they ever were caught together they
would always accuse the black man or woman for anything they could think of.

Those laws were technically made to make black men and women invisible. For example
they were not allowed to comment on a white woman’s appearance or they were not allowed to
laugh at a white person under any circumstances. Groups like CORE, NAACP, and SNCC knew
that there needs to be something done with this conflict. Amzie Moore a local NAACP leader in
Mississippi met with a SNCC worker Robert Parris Moses who was there to recruit more people
for an SNCC conference. Soon enough Moore encouraged Moses to bring more SNCC workers
to the state to begin a month-long voter registration campaign in the town of McComb.

Freedom Summer was a highlight event in the African American Civil Rights Movement
from the times of 1955 to 1968. This was a non violent organization to show that African
Americans should always have their freedom too. And, not only to have their freedom but, to
have the same and equal rights as everyone else in the nation. This organization was to create
and give things that African Americans at the time could never have any reach to. The actions of
the whites and the Jim Crow Laws were the reason why they could never have any of the
important needs in life.
 Associations like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) with the help of many college students up North knew that even though
African Americans won just a tiny piece of respect from the whites, they knew it was not going
to be that easy. In May of 1963 is where sit-ins started. The protests with blacks were very
violent. Protesters were sprayed with paint and got pepper thrown in their eyes. At an NAACP
rally a man named Medgar Evers told everyone there that “Freedom has never been free”. At this
point the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) and other national civil rights groups
founded in 1962 organized the Freedom Vote.

The Freedom Vote only had two main goals, which were to show Mississippi whites and
the nation that blacks wanted to vote and to give blacks practicing in casting a ballot for those
who have never voted before. 60 white students from Yale and Stanford Universities went to
Mississippi to help spread the words of the Freedom Vote. On the day of the mock election day
the Freedom Vote candidates easily won that campaign. After the achievement of Freedom Vote,
SNCC sent volunteers into Mississippi in the summer of 1964, which was also an actual
presidential election year. The volunteers were sent there for a voter registration drive which
became known as Freedom Summer.

The summer of 1964 was just the beginning of the whole African American Civil Rights
Movement. There were sit-ins and many protests. Bob Moses outlined the goals of Freedom
Summer. The first goal was to expand black voter registration in the state; the second was to
organize a legally constituted “Freedom Democratic Party” that would challenge the whites only
Mississippi Democratic party. The third one was to establish “freedom schools” to teach reading
and math to black children and the fourth one was to open community centers where indigent
blacks could obtain legal and medical assistance. These goals would definitely help everyone
that really needs the help and it would make a better future for the children.

For the first process of this Freedom Summer 800 students gathered together for a week-
long orientation session at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio that June of 1964. Most
of the students being white and young averaging at the age of 21. Each volunteer asked to bring
five hundred dollars for bond as well as money for living expenses, medical bills, and
transportation going back home. A member of SNCC James Forman told them to be prepared for
death as to he may be killed or everyone may be killed. He also told them that if they were ever
arrested they were to go to jail in silence for starting commotion is not necessary for police men
who do not have fifth grade education.

It was on June 21 the day after the first 200 volunteers left for Mississippi from Ohio.
Three workers including one volunteer disappeared. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and
James Chaney had been taken to jail for speeding charges but, they were let go later on. Local
police called when the men failed to check-in with the Freedom Summer Headquarters but, a
sheriff named Lawrence Rainey was convinced that the men were trying to hide to gain
publicity. During the search for the three missing workers the FBI uncovered the bodies of three
lynched blacks who had been missing for some time but, were not the correct ones.
 Meanwhile after the first day Freedom Summer went on. Just a handful of volunteers left
the session in Ohio to help the provided basic services to blacks in the South. “Freedom clinics”
provided healthcare for those who needed medical assistance. Northern lawyers were asked to
work in legal clinics to secure basic constitutional rights. “Freedom schools” though were
illegal, taught blacks of all ages traditional subjects as well as African American history.

Freedom Summer had many important projects. One of them was the establishment of the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white Democratic Party in
the state. In June there were four names for the MFDP candidates on the Democratic primary
ballot as delegates to be sent to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City but, all four
lost. Later that month, the regular Democratic Party accepted a platform that rejected the national
party platform in the area of civil rights. This put President Johnson in a very difficult position
because the national Democratic organization required all the delegates to make a pledge of party
loyalty, but Johnson had to allow the Mississippi Democrats to be seated if not delegates from
five other states would walk out.

On August 4, the bodies of the three civil rights workers were found in a dam on a farm
near Philadelphia, Mississippi. They had all been shot and the one black, James Chaney had been
brutally beaten. It turns out that on June 21 Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner set out to
investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia. When they were arrested and then let was the
last time they were seen alive. The discovery moved the media attention back to Mississippi just
eighteen days before the start of the Democratic National Convention.

Two days later the MFDP held a convention and selected a sixty eight person delegation,
which included four whites, to go to the national convention. By then, the party had the support
of ADA, delegates from nine states, and twenty five congressmen. These delegates wanted to be
seated instead of the regulars from the convention. To do this they had to persuade eleven of
them more than one hundred members of the Credentials Committee to vote in their favor. They
decided to provide testimony detailing to see how difficult it was for blacks to vote in
Mississippi.

The second focus of Freedom Summer, and one of the most successful in community
organizing and developing black-led institutions, which was the establishment of over thirty
“freedom schools”. Those schools used alternative and combinations of teaching techniques to
give each class information on African American history, politics, and literacy. These “freedom
schools” were most definitely functional from all the people they helped. The schools helped out
people who never got to go to school or got to get an education.

During Freedom Summer as mentioned earlier, Freedom Summer was organized but
associations called CORE, NAACP, and SNCC. All three together made a wonderful with each
of their own specialties. With CORE it was a congress of racial equality that was founded in
Chicago in 1942, flourished in the early and mid-1960s, and engaged in sit-ins and campaigns to
“desegregate public accommodations in northern cities”. NAACP being a national association
for the advancement of colored people was a big support in the process of the whole Freedom
Summer campaign. SNCC is a student nonviolent coordinating committee which made changes
without having to start any violent movement or actions towards anyone.
 The four goals for Freedom Summer was to expand black voter registration in the state,
to organize a legally constituted “Freedom Democratic Party”, establish “freedom schools” to
teach the traditional subjects to all black children including African American history, and to
open community centers where indigent blacks could obtain legal and medical assistance. In
1964 6.7% of Mississippi’s voting-age blacks were registered to vote, 16.3% below the national
average. By 1969 that number leaped to 66.5%, 5.5% above the national average. With those
numbers anybody can see the difference Freedom Summer really made towards Mississippi.

Freedom Summer made a turning point for the developing civil rights movement as the
experiences of the MFDP, state control, and the inability to automatically alter the situation for
poor blacks. Many of the volunteers, influenced by their work in Mississippi went on to become
leaders. Most of them becoming leaders in the Black Power, New Left, and women’s movements
of the 1960s. Most importantly Freedom Summer succeeded in bringing attention to racial
oppression in Mississippi, and strengthened the resolve of movement activists to continue their
endeavor.

In conclusion Freedom Summer has affected us now because how people used to live
back then is nothing the same as to how we live now. As years passed by people realized that
everyone should live equally and because of someone’s color shouldn’t mean you should treat
them any different. The way every single volunteer acted toward everyone person in Mississippi
showed that they were there to show everyone else something. They showed people in
Mississippi that African Americans can do something to and not just white men or women but,
everyone can.

After the Mississippi Freedom Summer was done, they continued all of the schools that
were set-up which led to how many schools they had in 1965. From research it shows that in
1965 Mississippi had thirty schools. There were one hundred and eight students attending
McComb Freedom School. After it was set on fire, students still went to school on the burnt
grass.

The debates about this topic still are going on everywhere. Like in Chicago, on February
9, 2011, there was a mayoral debate that soon got into the topic of African American history.
Each candidate was saying their own definition of what United State slaves mean. And every
single one of them had a different answer. Some people think that that debate was almost
confusing since Chicago was after all part of a union state where slavery was never legal.