Freedom Summer
1.
Three CORE Members murdered in Mississippi
**********
Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register
blacks to vote during the summer of 1964.
During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights activists, many of them
white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern
states to try to end the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in
the region. Although black men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the
Fifteenth Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right.
White local and state officials systematically kept blacks from voting through formal
methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear and
intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings. The inability to vote was only
one of many problems blacks encountered in the racist society around them, but the
civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter registration understood its crucial
significance as well the white supremacists did. An African American voting bloc
would be able to effect social and political change.
Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in
the South that had started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on
Mississippi because of the state's particularly dismal voting-rights record: in 1962 only
6.7 percent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest
percentage in the country. The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a
coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which was led by
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and included the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC). By mobilizing volunteer white college students
from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public relations coup as
hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the country to cover the voterregistration campaign.
The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP) was a major focus of
the summer program. More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which
elected a slate of sixty-eight delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in
Atlantic City. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of the delegates
representing Mississippi's all white Democratic Party. While the effort failed, it drew
national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of MFDP
delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also lead to a ban on racially
discriminatory delegations at future conventions.
Freedom Summer officials also established 30 "Freedom Schools" in towns
throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in Mississippi's educational
system. Mississippi's black schools were invariably poorly funded, and teachers had to
use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history. Many of
the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools, whose curriculum
included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership
development in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic. The
Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least 1000 students that first summer, and
ended up with 3000. The schools became a model for future social programs like Head
Start, as well as alternative educational institutions.
Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the
campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from local residents and
police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers' homes were frequent targets; 37
black churches and 30 black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned during
that summer, and the cases often went unsolved. More than 1000 black and white
volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police
officers. But the summer's most infamous act of violence was the murder of three
young civil rights workers, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white
coworkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. On June 21, Chaney,
Goodman and Schwerner set out to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia,
Mississippi, but were arrested that afternoon and held for several hours on alleged
traffic violations. Their release from jail was the last time they were seen alive before
their badly decomposed bodies were discovered under a nearby dam six weeks later.
Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and
Chaney from a savage beating.
The murders made headlines all over the country, and provoked an outpouring of
national support for the Civil Rights Movement. But many black volunteers realized
that because two of the victims were white, these murders were attracting much more
attention than previous attacks in which the victims had been all black, and this added
to the growing resentment they had already begun to feel towards the white volunteers.
There was growing dissension within the ranks over charges of white paternalism and
elitism. Black volunteers complained that the whites seemed to think they had a
natural claim on leadership roles, and that they treated the rural blacks as though they
were ignorant. There was also increasing hostility from both black and white workers
over the interracial romances that developed the summer. Meanwhile, women
volunteers of both races were charging both the black and white men with sexist
behavior.
But despite the internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. The
well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of
black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
federal legislation that among other things outlawed the tactics Southern states had
used to prevent blacks from voting. Freedom Summer also instilled among African
Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action. As Fannie
Lou Hamer later said, "Before the 1964 project there were people that wanted change,
but they hadn't dared to come out. After 1964 people began moving. To me it's one of
the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi."
*****
Source: http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom_summer.htm
2.
3.
Three Letters From a Freedom School Teacher
Chude Pam Parker Allen
Holly Springs, Mississippi, July 1964
LETTER HOME: Saturday, July 11, 1964
Dear Mom and Dad,
Forgive me for not writing this week. We have been really busy here and I have had little time to
prepare my lessons much less write letters. In fact, I have been so busy that I had to take an hour
out this morning to reread all the letters I have received this week because I had had only time to
scan them when I got them. It was really nice to take an hour out this morning and think about
other people who love me and care about me. I doubt if I will be this busy again but one can
never tell around here.
School is going just fine. The kids are draining me of all I know. They want to learn so badly. We
have no problem with attention drifting. Our problem is dismissing a group so it can go to
another class. I feel so humble because the girls I work with are so wonderful. They are so eager
to learn that I don't feel that I can ever begin to give them all that they are ready for.
School starts at nine every morning Monday through Friday. We meet on the porch of our
freedom school. We have been very lucky in terms of facilities here in Holly Springs. We have
two houses right next to each other and right across the street from Rust college. The Freedom
House is made up of our office, a kitchen, and bedrooms for the boys. The freedom school has
five classrooms and three bedrooms for boys. The girls, as you know, all are living in the girls'
dormitory on Rust campus. There are about 35 people involved in our project. The majority are
involved with the freedom school and community center, which in our case, is in the same
building.
We have begun to branch out into counties and have already started one school in a rural church.
On the first day we sent out 5 teachers and 61 people showed up. We are about to start another
school in another county. So all I can say is that the response around here has been fantastic. The
age of the people who attend school ranges from 4 to 60. It's fantastic.
I will not be going out to the counties to teach most probably. One reason is that someone has to
stay here and teach. I have gotten along so well with my students that we decided I should start
another class here while some of the others go out and teach in the counties in the afternoons.
Our schedule goes something like this:
School begins 9 A.M.
Singing until 9:15
Talk given by one of the voter registration people concerning events of the day before in
Mississippi.
9:30 - 10:30 classes on the core curriculum, which is Negro history and the Movement.
10:30 - 11:30 classes in special interests — dancing, arts and crafts, science, sports, etc.
School closes at noon and opens again at 2 P.M. with a French class, an arts and crafts class, a
music class.
At 3 P.M. there are a play writing, debate and journalism classes for the teenagers.
At 4 P.M. there is a seminar in nonviolence, which I am teaching.
There will be a few more classes in things like politics and economics which have not been
scheduled yet because we just got more teachers three days ago and they haven't quite decided
who's going to do what.
In the evenings the school is open for adult literacy. One night a week has been set aside to help
people learn the voter registration form and the five parts of the Mississippi Constitution which
the registrar can ask to be interpreted. We are also going to start a sewing class. We have one
nurse who has already started a class for girls who would like to become nurses at 8 A.M. each
weekday morning.
There are always kids around the freedom school playing ping-pong, listening to records or
talking. Right now I am sitting in one of the classrooms writing this letter. There are about five
boys on the porch playing ping-pong. Another boy has brought over a number of his favorite
records, so show tunes are drifting in from another room. The majority of the staff has gone out
to a picnic in one of the counties. I decided not to go because I knew that I would not have for
certain a block of time that I could sit down and write letters if I did not take advantage of this
quiet Saturday afternoon. Sundays are anything but quiet around here since we all split up and go
to churches, some of which don't get out until three or four in the afternoon.
Source: http://www.crmvet.org/info/chude-fs.htm
4.
Source : http://www.keepinghistoryalive.com/media/photo-fs-largemap.jpg
5.
The Freedom Summer Killings
James Earl Chaney lived in Mississippi his entire life.
Michael Schwerner spent six months in the state and
Andrew Goodman had been there only a day. But on June
21, 1964, all three men were murdered there, and nearly
40 years later, the quest to bring their killers to justice is
still not over.
During the summer of 1964, Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman volunteered for Freedom
Summer, a voter registration drive coordinated by various civil rights groups to improve the
rights of African-Americans in Mississippi.
On June 21, 1964, Neshoba County Deputy Cecil Price stopped the trio on traffic charges
while they were driving to Meridian, Mississippi.
They were jailed briefly and then released. But as they drove away, as many as 22 members
of the Ku Klux Klan stopped the car, gunned down all three and buried their bodies beneath
a 15-foot earthen dam in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Their bodies were discovered 44 days
later, on August 4, after an informant tipped off the FBI.
6.
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/oh_freedom/slide8.html
Click this link to see a slideshow on Freedom Summer.
7.
Why I Am Going to Mississippi
Talk by Pam Parker to Her Church
June 9, 1964
Before leaving to attend the orientation in Oxford, Ohio, I spoke to the eight
o'clock and eleven o'clock services at my Episcopal church. Trinity Church,
Solebury, was a small country church with a red door and three long, narrow
stain glass windows. The Parishioners were white and for the most part, upper
middle class. They had watched me grow from a small girl to a young woman.
A note about language: In 1964 the term of respect for African Americans was
"Negro." "Man" and "mankind" were used to mean both women and men. My friends
and I referred to ourselves as "girls" and the male students as "boys."
I spent last semester attending Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Spelman is a Negro
women's college. I went there brimming over with life and energy and love for everyone. I was
rejected as a northern, white do-gooder.
I knew what it meant to be the object of hostility and suspicion. I knew what it meant to feel
alone. I knew what it meant to walk across campus, afraid to smile because I feared rejection. I
knew what it meant to be the cause of a friend losing all her friends. I knew what it meant to feel
inadequate as a person. And I knew what it meant to wish my skin was a different color -- to wish
that it was black so that I would be accepted for me and so that I would not have to feel guilt
every time a white man committed an injustice.
But I also learned what it meant to have real friends. To have a boy who tried never to show his
feelings tell me that whenever I needed him he was there. To have a friend stick by me even
though she was under great pressure to reject me. To have my family and Carleton friends
praying for me and loving me even though they could not understand what was happening. And
somewhere along the way I learned how to forgive - to forgive not just others but myself.
I am going to Mississippi this summer to teach in the Freedom Schools being set up by the
Council of Federated Organizations, the civil rights group made up of workers from the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference... I am
going because I feel that I have learned so much while at Spelman that I would like to share and
because I have seen that there is still so much I have to learn about life and love.
I want to help in whatever way I can to alleviate injustice and to help people develop self-esteem
and dignity. I want to learn from people who have known more grief, humiliation and misery
than I can ever know.
I will be teaching Negro boys and girls who are going into the eleventh and twelfth grades in
Mississippi. Some will be as old as I am due to their having had to drop out of school. They will
be a unique elite because only about 4% of Mississippi Negroes graduate from high school. They
are students who are beginning to see themselves as human beings with dignity of their own. As
they will have risked a great deal by coming to the Freedom Schools, their courage makes them
potential for future Negro leaders.
I do not know what these students have experienced. I cannot even imagine how much hurt and
inferiority and hatred they have felt. We, who are going to Mississippi as teachers, hope to give
our students love and support as they develop their minds and leadership potential this summer.
We will tutor them where they are weak in their regular studies and in subjects where they wish
additional knowledge and skill. We will also teach Negro history to show them that their people
have contributed to our country in a way that they can be proud.
We will teach what democracy really means by living democratically within our schools and by
following local civil rights cases to the federal courts. Hopefully we can create an atmosphere of
mutual respect, which will encourage the students to ask questions and to share their own
thoughts. This will be a new experience for them as Mississippi schools discourage the asking of
questions and creative discussions of any sort.
I know that one problem we will have is how to balance pride in being Negro with pride in being
human. It is necessary for Negroes, who have been told all their lives that they are inferior, to
develop pride in themselves as Negroes. But somehow, if possible, we must transcend race and
relate as human beings. Whether this will be possible in Mississippi with all the fear and tension
that exists between the white and the Negro, I do not know.
There is nothing rooting in your favor when you attempt to become friends with a Negro. First of
all you must overcome both your own and your friend's misunderstandings and prejudices. For
example, I called Spelman a subculture one day and immediately suspicion and resentment began
to build inside a friend of mine at Spelman. Sociologically the word "subculture" has no value
judgment, but simply means a smaller culture within a larger culture. Used to being looked down
upon, my friend saw the word as meaning substandard. I have no idea how long she mulled that
over in her mind before she finally confronted me. Luckily she did confront me and we were able
to get the misunderstanding cleared up. But this is an example of what can happen to distort and
destroy a friendship if the two people involved are not committed enough to the value of having
friendships with people of different racial and cultural backgrounds to confront one another when
they have been hurt and insulted by the other.
I became especially good friends with one girl at Spelman. One night we sat in my room talking.
My friend had come in after I had gone to bed and sat at the end of my bed in the dark. In the
dark you could not tell what color the two people were who were talking. We were just two girls
sitting up talking late at night — a very normal thing which happens in hundreds of colleges all
over the country.
We sat in the dark and I heard her say that there were times she hated all white people, that she
knew it was irrational but she could not help it. I could not see the color of my skin but I knew
what color it was. It didn't seem fair.
I felt so alone — to be hated because my skin was white, for my friend to be hated because her
skin was black, to be hated for something you can do nothing about. You want to yell out, "No,
no! I am a person. Accept me or reject me for the person I am, not for the color of my skin. Do
not let my skin color or what people who have the same skin color as mine have done to you,
stand in our way."
My friend did not believe a Negro and a white person could ever be completely friends, that the
Negro could ever erase all suspicion and hatred because you are white or that the white could
ever be fully rid of a prejudice which says that Negroes are little better than animals and not the
equal of the white man.
I lay awake for a while after my friend left almost crying because I could not understand. And
then I thought of all the Negro boys and girls who must have cried themselves to sleep because
they could not understand the prejudice and injustices of our society.
I found it hard while at Spelman to forget I was white. My friend and I did become very close and
forgot about color most of the time. But when some white boys insulted a boyfriend of hers and
she told me this one evening, I felt sick again that my skin was white and that I, too, was guilty. I
looked at her and said, "I know I am white but I don't understand. I'm sick."
"No, Pam, " she answered, "I don't see you as white." We transcended the color line but it has
been difficult. And yet, because we have done it, perhaps it is possible in Mississippi also.
I attended the Spring Conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Atlanta,
Georgia over Easter weekend. For me the most momentous event was Friday evening, which was
devoted solely to singing Freedom Songs (after a powerful speech by John Lewis.) It was in the
singing that all the individuals, who had been working throughout the South to win dignity and
equal rights for the Negro, became one living mass singing together the hopes and aspirations of
all — freedom.
It was in the SNCC theme song, "We Shall Overcome", that the group sang forth most
completely in one voice. We stood clasping hands, singing and swaying back and forth to the
music, one living, breathing, hopeful mass. And when we sang the verse "Black and white
together" we sang "now" instead of the usual "someday" and we raised our clasped hands above
our heads and you could see black, brown and white hands held together in one living whole.
Here was our goal, our dream -- all mankind joined together for one purpose. May it be this way
in Mississippi within the (freedom) schools. And may it be this way someday in our country and
in the world. May we be truly united under God.
I am leaving for Mississippi in two weeks. It will cost me about $450 to meet my expenses this
summer and at school next year. What else will my going cost? How much it will cost me in
suffering, I cannot tell, but I have no doubt that I will receive more in terms of my growth as a
human being than I could ever possibly give no matter what happens.
I will be living with a Negro family while teaching in Mississippi. This family will be taking
great risks by having me live with them, which could result in the loss of jobs, the destruction of
property and even loss of life. For my own family there will be a summer of continual anxiety
over my physical wellbeing.
If I may, I would like to ask two things of you: first, that you pray for me and my two families,
that we may have the strength of the Holy Spirit with us this summer and second, that if you can,
you help me to meet my financial needs of $450.
Source: http://www.crmvet.org/info/chudewhy.htm