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Historical Essay

What Was the 1964 Freedom Summer Project?

Overview of the 1964 Freedom Summer | Wisconsin Historical Guild

Freedom Summer, 1964

Images from visual materials in the collections of the Wisconsin Historical Club.

Freedom Summer was a nonviolent effort past civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system during 1964.

Planning began late in 1963 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to recruit several hundred northern higher students, by and large white, to piece of work in Mississippi during the summer. They helped African-American residents endeavor to register to vote, establish a new political party, and larn well-nigh history and politics in newly-formed Freedom Schools.

Because black Mississippians were barred from Democratic Party primaries and caucuses, they challenged the right of the Party's all-white delegation to represent the state at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August.

Considering black Mississippi residents were not allowed to vote, they held a parallel "Freedom Election" in Nov and challenged the right of the all-white Mississippi congressional delegation to represent the state in Washington in Jan 1965.

Residents and volunteers were met by extraordinary violence, including murders, bombings, kidnappings, and torture. Much of this was covered on national television and focused the country's attention on civil rights issues for the first time.

Public outrage helped spur the U.Due south. Congress to pass the Civil Rights Human action of 1964 and the Voting Rights Human action of 1965.

"Freedom Summer" is a term invented after these events occurred. At the time, participants usually chosen it the Mississippi Summer Project.

Why Did Freedom Summer Happen?

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Colored Entrance at Malco Theater, 1953

Memphis, Tennessee. In southern states, a airtight guild was enforced past laws created by white supremacists. The laws stipulated that African Americans would enter stores through separate entrances as a sign of beingness treated as a lower grade of citizens. View the original source certificate: WHI 83204

For nearly a century, segregation had prevented well-nigh African-Americans in Mississippi from voting or holding public office. Segregated housing, schools, workplaces, and public accommodations denied black Mississippians admission to political or economical power. Most lived in dire poverty, indebted to white banks or plantation owners and kept in bank check by police and white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. African-Americans who dared to challenge these conditions were oft killed, tortured, raped, beaten, arrested, fired from their jobs, or evicted from their homes.

SNCC and Cadre leaders believed that bringing well-connected white volunteers from northern colleges to Mississippi would expose these weather. They hoped that media attending would make the federal government enforce civil rights laws that local officials ignored. They as well planned to help blackness Mississippians organize a new political party that would exist ready to compete confronting the mainstream Democratic Political party later voting rights had been won.

Who Participated in Freedom Summer?

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Cadre Brochure on 'The Right to Vote,' 1962

Sumter, Mississippi. Photo of a local resident by Bob Adelman. View the original source certificate: Congress of Racial Equality. Southern Regional Role Records, 1954-1966

More than than 60,000 black Mississippi residents risked their lives to attend local meetings, choose candidates, and vote in a "Liberty Election" that ran parallel to the regular 1964 national elections. Several hundred African-American families also hosted northern volunteers in their homes.

Almost 1,500 volunteers worked in project offices scattered across Mississippi. They were directed past 122 SNCC and CORE paid staff working aslope them or at headquarters in Jackson and Greenwood. Most volunteers were white students from northern colleges, but 254  were clergy sponsored by the National Quango of Churches, 169 were attorneys recruited by the National Lawyers Guild and the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, and fifty were medical professionals from the Medical Commission for Human Rights.

Administratively, the project was run past the Quango of Federate Organizations (COFO), an umbrella grouping formed in 1962 that included non just SNCC and CORE merely also the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and others. SNCC provided roughly 80 per centum of the staff and funding for the projection and Core contributed nearly all of the remaining 20 pct. The Mississippi Summer Projection director was Bob Moses of SNCC and the assistant director was Dave Dennis of CORE.

Who Were the Key People Involved?

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Lawrence Guyot Addressing a Group, 1964

Mississippi. View the original source document: WHI 97876

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Fannie Lou Hamer on Boob tube, 1964

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party candidate. View the original source document: WHI 97928

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Freedom Means Vote For Victoria Gray, 1964

Mississippi. Forth with Fannie Lou Hammer, Annie Devine, and Aaron Henry, she helped institute the Mississippi Liberty Democratic Political party. View the original source document: WHI 97167

SNCC shunned the concept of powerful leaders. It made all its of import decisions as a group, and conceived Freedom Summer as a grass-roots move of people rise upwardly to seize command of their own destinies. More 500 individuals worked on the projection total-time during the summer of 1964. A handful of those who played central roles were:

Robert Moses

He proposed the thought of Freedom Summer to SNCC and COFO leaders in the autumn of 1963 and was chosen to direct it early in 1964. More than any other person, Moses could be said to have led Liberty Summer.

Dave Dennis

A veteran of earlier sit-ins and freedom rides, he was the leader of Core'southward operations in Mississippi and Louisiana and assistant manager of COFO. He led Cadre's participation in Freedom Summertime and, with Bob Moses, guided the project overall.

Julian Bail and Mary King

They ran the SNCC Communications Section, making certain that the national media was available to embrace events and that project staff stayed informed and in-touch almost the constant dangers.

Lawrence Guyot (1939-2012)

He was a driving forcefulness behind the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)

She was a leader of the MFDP who challenged the white-supremacist delegation to the DNC, ran for Congress in the Freedom Election in Nov, and helped lead the congressional challenge that followed it. Her impassioned plea for voting rights at the DNC was seen on national television set past millions and epitomized Freedom Summer to many viewers.

Annie Devine (1912-2000) and Victoria Grayness (1926-2006)

They were leaders of the MFDP who challenged the white-supremacist delegation to the DNC, ran for Congress in the Freedom Election in November, and helped lead the congressional challenge that followed it.

What Were the Goals for Freedom Summer?

Its overarching goal was to empower local residents to participate in local, land, and national elections. Its other main goal was to focus the nation's attention on weather in Mississippi. Specific goals for the summer included:

Increase Voter Registration

Organizers wanted as many blackness Mississippians as possible to effort to join the voter rolls. They correctly assumed that the majority woud exist denied the right to vote and that this injustice could be widely exposed.

Create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

Because officials prevented nigh blacks from registering to vote or participating in the regular Democratic Political party, organizers tried to create a split party and concord a parallel election. The MFDP was open up to anyone (black or white), chose its platform and candidates democratically, and sent a delegation to the Autonomous National Convention in August 1964 in hopes of being recognized as the legitimate voice of Democrats in Mississippi.

Challenge the Autonomous National Committee (DNC)

At the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Bailiwick of jersey, the MFDP contested the right of the white-supremacist delegation to represent Mississippi. They challenged it on the grounds that blackness residents had been systematically excluded from party meetings and primaries at which the delegates were chosen. Their testimony before the Democratic Political party'southward Credentials Committee was circulate throughout the nation.

Prepare Up Freedom Schools

Schools were established in local churches, storefronts, and other buildings so children and adults could learn blackness history, social studies, reading, and math, as well every bit develop leadership skills.

Open Customs Centers

These were opened in existing buildings or new ones erected from scratch in guild to provide child care, library books, meals, medical assistance, and other services denied to segregated black neighborhoods.

Agree a Freedom Vote

Since black residents couldn't vote in the regular election for president and local offices, organizers conducted a parallel election in which all residents could participate. It was scheduled simply before the segregated regular election held on November 3, 1964.

Challenge Exclusionary Congressional Elections

Afterwards the all-white winners of the regular election were sent to Washington, D.C., the MFDP challenged their right to take seats in Congress because blackness residents had been systematically excluded from the balloter procedure.

Who Opposed Freedom Summertime?

A number of groups opposed the project.

Mississippi's Elected Officials

Officials in Mississippi at all levels denounced the Summer Projection. Its senators and governor publicly refused to obey federal integration laws, the state police well-nigh doubled in size, legislators passed new laws prohibiting picketing and leafleting, and local sheriffs and law chiefs expanded their forces and caused new weapons.

Concern Leaders

Businesses banded together in white Citizens Councils to coordinate punishment of African-Americans who participated in Liberty Summer. They foreclosed mortgages on black residents' homes, fired workers from jobs, banned customers from shopping in stores, and shut down food pantries for the poor.

White Supremacy Groups

Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan inflicted violence on blackness residents and civil rights workers. Between June 16 and September xxx, 1964, in that location were at least 6 murders, 29 shootings, 50 bombings, more than lx beatings, and over 400 arrests of project workers and local residents.

What Happened During Freedom Summertime?

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The Mississippi Liberty Democratic Party: Background and Recent Developments, 1965

Mississippi. View the original source certificate: Lucile Montgomery Papers, 1963-1967

On the project'southward beginning day, June 21, 3 workers (James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman) were kidnapped and murdered. The search for their killers dominated the national news and focused public attending on Mississippi until their bodies were discovered on August 4.

Merely a few hundred new blackness voters were able to register, but the harassment and reprisals against them were widely covered in the national media. Public outrage helped swell support for new laws and federal intervention.

The MFDP convention drew hundreds of people and successfully launched the new party. Its delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Baronial, notwithstanding, were not recognized past party leaders and were not allowed to take seats.

More 40 Freedom Schools opened in 20 communities. More than than 2,000 students enrolled in classes led by 175 teachers.

During the unofficial Liberty Vote held October 31-Nov ii, more than 62,000 people cast ballots despite shootings, beatings, intimidation, and arrests. In well-nigh counties, Freedom Voters outnumbered regular Democratic Party voters.

The congressional challenge was launched on January v, 1965. Later on nine months of legal maneuvering, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected the MFDP challenge and allowed the all-white Mississippi delegation to occupuy the state'southward seats.

What Did Freedom Summertime Accomplish?

Americans all effectually the land were shocked past the killing of ceremonious rights workers and the brutality they witnessed on their televisions. Freedom Summer raised the consciousness of millions of people to the plight of African-Americans and the demand for modify. The Civil Rights Human action of 1964 and the Voting Rights Deed of 1965 passed Congress in part because lawmakers' constituents had been educated nigh these issues during Liberty Summer.

Mississippi's black residents gained organizing skills and political experience. In later years, when the federal regime finally sent dozens of officials into local courthouses to enable African-Americans to vote and run for office, they were prepared to take function in the political process.

Past the fall of 1964, many organizers and activists had get disillusioned. The brutality of the white ability structure convinced some civil rights workers that nonviolence had failed. The refusal of the U.S. government to enforce its ain civil rights laws disillusioned those who had hoped for federal intervention. The rejection of the MFDP challenges past the Democratic Political party and the U.S. House of Representatives persuaded many activists around the nation that traditional politics would not secure basic ceremonious rights. Some national leaders, such equally Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, therefore began to urge African-Americans to seize their rights "past whatever means necessary." This sentiment helped create the Black Power Movement and organizations such as the Black Panthers.

What Happened Afterwards Freedom Summer?

The struggle against segregation and repression continued throughout the South. Conditions inverse only subsequently the Voting Rights Act of 1965 legally empowered the federal government to send its own officials into local courthouses. Past the end of 1966, more than half of African-Americans in southern states had registered to vote. In the years that followed, many were elected to local offices such as mayors, school boards, and chiefs of police force.

Many SNCC and CORE staff went on to important careers in public service. John Lewis of SNCC was elected to the U.S. Congress, Mary Male monarch of SNCC oversaw the Peace Corps and Vista under President Carter, and her colleague Julian Bond headed the NAACP after serving many years in the Georgia legislature. Other staff became influential professors, attorneys, and civil servants.

Many of the northern volunteers went on to start or to pb important anti-war, women'due south, and gay rights organizations. For case, voter registration worker Mario Savio started the Berkeley Costless Speech communication Move; freedom school instructor Chude Pam Parker Allen helped organize women's liberation groups in New York and San Francisco; and Barney Frank, a volunteer in the Jackson office, became one of the nation's get-go openly gay politicians in the U.South. Congress. Many others devoted their careers to legal or social services for the disadvantaged.

Learn More than

• View the Freedom Summer Digital Collection

  Over xl,000 pages of original documents are are available online.

• See More About Freedom Summer

  Overview of Freedom Summer resources with links to specific content.

Learn More from Other Institutions

• Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Annal

  Visit over 7,000 pages of digitized photographs, letters, diaries, and oral history transcripts, too as finding aids for manuscript collections that are not online. Created past the University of Southern Mississippi.

• The King Center

  See an archive of nearly ane million pages that The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change has maintained for over a quarter century. Information technology has recently begun putting selections of the most important materials online.

• Ceremonious Rights Motility Veterans

  View documents, letters, reports, stories, memoirs, and other materials contributed by Civil Rights workers on this very big and rich website.

• SNCC Legacy Project

  Meet essays, calendars of upcoming events, and more from this website run by former staff and volunteers of the Educatee Irenic Coordinating Committee.

Have Questions?

Email us to get answers to your questions about Freedom Summer.

• asklibrary@wisconsinhistory.org

Source: https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS3707

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