We need a 21st-Century Freedom Summer! Here’s why
16th May 2022 · 0 Comments
As we approach the 58th Anniversary of “Freedom Summer,” which took place in Mississippi from June 14, 1964, to August 20, 1964, America’s Black communities should commemorate and pay homage to the courageous youth and adults who successfully fought for voting rights. At a time when the virulently racist Ku Klux Klan used violence to silence the voices and votes of Mississippi’s Black citizens, these freedom fighters risked their lives for our right to vote.
That summer, voting rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were set up by Mississippi law enforcement and killed by Klan members for registering people to vote. The courageous efforts of these martyrs and others paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Our nation owes them a debt of gratitude for ensuring that everyone’s Fifteenth Amendment right to vote was enforced.
The upcoming anniversary is more than a reminder that the fight for voting rights is not over. While it’s a historical fact that civil rights activists made it possible for people to register to vote without fear of intimidation and bodily harm, today, Black and brown Americans are staring in the face of discriminatory attacks on voting rights yet again.
This time, the attacks emanate from white Republican legislators and elected officials. Republican majorities in statehouses have passed more than 300 discriminatory voter suppression laws and unfairly gerrymandered reapportionment to maintain white power. Republican state officials are continuing to purge Black voters from voting rolls.
Some state officials have ended Sunday voting, removed ballot boxes from sidewalks, shortened poll hours and early voting days, and have complicated verification procedures for voters and complex absentee balloting processes.
This points to one inevitable outcome: We need another Freedom Summer.
The election of Barack H. Obama, America’s first Black president, created a whitelash not seen since post-Reconstruction America. In April 1865, at the end of the American Civil War, former slave-owning legislators began passing voter suppression laws, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, whites-only primaries, gerrymandered districts – and every conceivable discriminatory legislation to preserve white rule and legal apartheid.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1870, guaranteeing the right to vote to all citizens, did nothing to keep southern legislatures from denying Black people their right to vote by any means necessary: lynching, intimidation, violent threats and destruction of Black people’s property.
The fight for voting rights continued in the 20th century.
The year is 1964. Young Black college students and activists knew the only power Black Americans had was the vote. Some of the youth who participated in the 1961 Freedom Ride launched Freedom Summer in 1964, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, to register voters in the southern states.
On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred volunteers arrived in Mississippi. Mississippi Project Director Robert “Bob” Moses, SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) field secretary and co-director of COFO (Council of Federated Organizations), directed the summer project. Moses also co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with Fannie Lou Hamer, the legendary political activist and civil rights leader who helped organize Mississippi’s Freedom Summer, and Ella Baker, the founder of SNCC.
The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC, CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality), NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference).
Several Louisianans played pivotal roles in the Freedom Ride and Freedom Summer. George Raymond Jr., a New Orleanian, and Dave J. Dennis Sr., a Shreveport native, led desegregation efforts during the Freedom Rides and voter registration campaigns during Freedom Summer. George, a CORE member, was project director for Freedom Summer in 1964 and remained in charge in the following years.
Dennis was the assistant program director of COFO and CORE’s Mississippi project director.
In 1962, less than seven percent of Mississippi’s eligible Black voters were registered to vote. While 17,000 Black Mississippians attempted to register to vote that summer, only 1,200 were successful.
“Some believe the national attention the Freedom Summer garnered for the civil rights movement helped convince President Lyndon B. Johnson and Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act,” according to History.com.
Last week, Dave J. Dennis Sr. and his son, Dave J. Dennis Jr., held a book signing at STUDIO BE for “The Movement Made Us: A Father, A Son, And The Legacy of A Freedom Ride.” The book was written by Dave Jr. in collaboration with Dave Sr.
Dave Sr. spoke about the Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer. Dave Jr., a journalist, talked about the importance of collecting the stories of the elders and those who experienced the civil rights struggle.
Dave Sr. told the audience to address attacks on voting rights, “Do Something. Everyone can do Something.” Dave Sr. says everyday, people started the Freedom campaigns. “And you don’t need a lot of people. We started with a few people,” he adds, crediting Doris Castle, Oretha Castle Haley’s sister, with bringing him into the movement.
The struggle for voting rights, civil rights, human rights and freedom continues in America. The question is, “What are we going to do about it?” Is the answer another Freedom Summer in every state with voter suppression laws? We don’t know the answer. We do know that we can overcome efforts to silence our voices if all voting-age Blacks register to vote and actually vote people into office who will protect constitutional rights, not destroy, deny, or abolish them.
This article originally published in the May 16, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
