Freedom Summer: The catalyst for real civil rights
1st July 2024 · 0 Comments
Sixty years ago, in June 1964, a group of resilient men and women, including college students and their mentors from across the U.S., including Louisiana, embarked on a courageous journey. They ventured into the heart of the notoriously racist Mississippi, defying all odds, to register Black people to vote.
Their actions that summer, coupled with the tragic deaths of several civil rights workers, were not in vain. They led to the monumental Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which forever changed the course of history.
The murders of CORE members James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner by white supremacist KKK members, aided and abetted by law enforcement, shocked the conscience of the nation. The incident was widely reported chiefly because Goodman and Schwerner were white, a stark illustration of the systemic nature of the oppression faced by African Americans at the time.
Let us not underestimate the immense bravery and unwavering commitment of these men to racial justice and civil rights for all. They left the safety of their homes and families to risk their lives in a state with a long history of racial resentment and hatred. Their sacrifices and bravery will never be forgotten.
The killing of Black people in America by white terrorists was nothing new. Cross burnings, lynching and bombings occurred all too frequently. Blacks were killed for any reason or no reason at all. No Black person believed that Emmitt Till was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 because he whistled at a white woman store clerk. Till’s death launched the modern civil rights movement.
The Freedom Rides in 1961 and Freedom Summer in 1964 were extensions of the Civil Rights Movement. But nothing angered white racists more than Black people trying to exercise their right to vote.
Freedom Summer, the Mississippi voting rights campaign, was a collaborative effort coordinated by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of civil rights groups including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Many of the people trying to register Blacks to vote were beaten and arrested by white cops and attacked by white citizens in Mississippi while trying to register people.
Even as federal troops and others search for the bodies of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, at least “12 bodies of Black people” were found, David Dennis Sr. reported in his book, “The Movement Made Us,” “Mississippi had descended into a war zone,” Dennis commented.
Dennis, a Shreveport native, was a Dillard student when he joined CORE. At his book signing at Studio BE, Dennis told the audience he joined CORE after meeting Doris Castle, who was on Dillard’s campus passing out flyers about the organization. “I just joined CORE because I wanted to date Doris,” he laughed.
He played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement, serving as a field secretary for CORE in Louisiana and Mississippi and co-director with Bob Moses of the Voter Education Committee of COFO. He later earned a law degree at the University of Michigan, continuing his advocacy for civil rights through the legal system.
He helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
We owe much gratitude to those who put their lives on the line, as generations before them, to register people to vote. They went up against the KKK and law enforcement, and elected officials determined not to let Black folk exercise the power to elect people who looked like them.
Freedom Summer followed the infamous Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips undertaken by civil rights activists in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Many of the same youth who participated in the Freedom Rides also took part in Freedom Summer, demonstrating their unwavering commitment to the cause despite the risks they faced.
On May 4, 1961, national CORE launched “Freedom Rides” on a Trailways and Greyhound bus to test segregation on interstate buses and inside terminals after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the “separate but equal doctrine” decreed in Plessy v Ferguson in 1896. The decision ushered in 50 years of legal apartheid.
The ride began in Washington, D.C., and was to end in New Orleans.
New Orleans played a significant role in the civil rights movement and the Freedom Rides.
We must never forget the courage, bravery, and sacrifice of New Orleans’ CORE members Oretha Castle Haley, Rudy Lombard, Doris Castle, Don Hubbard, Jerome Smith, Doratha Smith-Simmons, Alice Tompson, Thomas Valentine, and George Raymond, among others. They integrated lunch counters, conducted voter registration campaigns, and participated in the Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer.
On November 9, 1961, CORE field secretary Jerome Smith, 22, Doratha Smith, 18, Alice Thompson, 22, Thomas Valentine, 23, and George Raymond, 18, got on a bus bound for Macomb in Pike County, Mississippi. When they attempted to integrate the lunch counter at the Greyhound Bus terminal, they were attacked by a mob of 30 to 40 whites. Jerome Smith, who suffered head injuries when he was slugged with brass knuckles during the attack, said FBI agents were present at the time of the attack but did nothing but take notes, SNCC member Jack H. Minnis wrote in “A Chronology of Violence and Intimidation in Mississippi since 1961.”
Minnis documented incidents from the beginning of the Freedom Rides on January 1, 1961, through February 4, 1964, during the Freedom Project. His accounts were published in The Congressional Record on April 4, 1963.
Minnis was born in Blackwell, Oklahoma, in 1926. He served as Research Director in SNCC’s Atlanta Office from 1952 to 1967. Before joining SNCC, Minnis worked as a lawyer with the Southern Regional Council. He died on July 14, 2005, in New Orleans.
Congressman John Lewis began his career in Civil Rights as the director of SNCC during that era.
The Freedom Summer Project resulted in various meetings, protests, freedom schools, freedom housing, freedom libraries, and a collective rise in awareness of voting rights and disenfranchisement experienced by African Americans in Mississippi.
According to U.S. government archives, during that summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was also formed. The party aimed to increase representation at the Democratic National Convention and give testimony about the grave mistreatment of African Americans who tried to register to vote.
Their efforts were a significant step towards addressing the systemic disenfranchisement of African Americans in Mississippi.
Local officials and state residents did receive efforts to register Black voters well.
It is believed that 1,062 people were arrested, 80 Freedom Summer workers were beaten, 37 churches were bombed or burned, 30 Black homes or businesses were bombed or burned, four civil rights workers were killed, and at least three Mississippi African Americans were murdered because of their involvement in this movement, according to archival documents. These numbers only begin to illustrate the extent of the violence and intimidation faced by civil rights workers, highlighting the immense bravery and sacrifice of those involved.
Due to the increased awareness of the acts of terrorism, intimidation, and deaths of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in July 1964, one month after their murders, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The following year saw the passage of the Voting Rights Act. However, it’s important to note that the fight for voting rights is ongoing, with new challenges and threats emerging in recent years.
Today, violent incidents over voter registration are rare, but voter intimidation is not. White government officials today are passing laws that make it more difficult for Black people to cast their ballots. GOP partisans make attempts to frighten voters by toting firearms outside of polling places.
Still, during this 60th Anniversary of Freedom Summer, we must honor and pay tribute to those who stood up in the face of tyranny and persisted despite threats and actual violence against them.
We are grateful. Thank you.
This article originally published in the July 1, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
