Mississippi Freedom Summer
•A 1964 CR campaign by SNCC and CORE
•Brought more than a thousand
Northerners, black and white, to
Mississippi.
•Along with Mississippians, worked on voter
registration and community education.
• Wanted to bring attention to
Mississippi, the most segregated and
violent state in the South
• Only 6.7% eligible Af Am voters
registered.
• “There is no state with a record that
approaches in inhumanity, murder,
brutality, and racial hatred. It is
absolutely at the bottom of the list.”
Medger Evers
Bob Moses, SNCC, Freedom Summer.
Planning
• Freedom Summer volunteers were told
that their job would not be "save the
Mississippi Negro" but to work with
local leadership.
• Included doctors, lawyers, ministers,
and college students.
• Volunteers trained in Oxford, Ohio to
prepare them for nonviolent action.
Training activists in the practice of nonviolence in Oxford, Ohio.
“For many of you, this will be the first experience
with a totalitarian state," he said. "In
Mississippi, remember that your word isn't
worth anything. You are an incompetent
witness in your own case. You are presumed
guilty.“ African-American lawyer, 1964
Students saying goodbye after Ohio training session.
Mississippi Reaction
• Called the “invasion” by Southern whites,
who reacted with violence.
• Over the course of the ten-week project:
4 CR workers killed
4 were critically wounded
80 Freedom Summer workers were beaten
1000 people were arrested (volunteers and
locals)
– 37 churches were bombed
– 30 Black homes/businesses were bombed
–
–
–
–
Mississippi Murders
• On June 21, 1964, James Chaney and
Michael Schwerner, both CORE organizers,
and summer volunteer Andrew Goodman
were arrested.
• Released into a waiting ambush by Klansmen.
• Reported on TV and on newspaper front
pages, the triple disappearance shocked the
nation.
• All three were shot and bodies buried.
• Drew massive media attention to Freedom
Summer and to Mississippi racism.
Burned out car belonging to Chaney.
James Chaney
Andrew Goodman
Michael Schwerner
Summer Volunteer’s Thoughts After Murders
• Their disappearance, although might have been
calculated to drive others away from the state
had just the opposite effect on me and
everyone else. Whenever an incident like this
happens—and they happen fairly often,
although usually not this serious—everyone
reacts the same way. They become more and
more determined to stay in the state and fight
the evil system that people have to live under
here…
• Interviewer: Are you scared?
• Yes, I’m very much afraid. Everyone here is.
Freedom Summer, 1964
• "All my life I’ve been sick and tired ," she
shakes her head . "Now I'm sick and tired of
being sick and tired.“ Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964
• SNCC staff member Dorie Ladner worked in a
summer project office. She spent sleepless
nights taking threatening phone calls from
segregationists. She says she was so
frightened, she vomited every night after
supper. "I suffered from trying to dodge white
men in pickup trucks, worrying about whether
or not somebody was going to bomb the house
where we were sleeping, whether or not we
were going to get killed.”
Impact
• Before Freedom Summer, the media
paid little attention to the harassment
of black voters in the South.
• When white students’ lives were
threatened, the media spotlight was
turned on the state.
• Freedom Summer focused national
attention on Mississippi and influenced
the passing of the Voting Rights Act of
1965.
Mississippi Changing
• The nationwide shame created by Freedom
Summer haunted Mississippi, but state made
slow progress.
• It took a decade for black voting to become
a reality.
• However, in the 1980s and 1990s, Mississippi
elected more black officials than any other
state.
• Today, nearly every major city in Mississippi
has a black mayor, black city councilmen,
black policemen, judges, and other officials.