Freedom Summer: Winning Back the Vote
Mississippi was one of the most violent and segregated states in the nation. The state had the dubious honor of leading the nation in the number of lynchings. Even though they made up half the population only 6% of African-American population could vote. This is why Mississippi was chosen as the target of the Mississippi Freedom Project in 1964. Since Reconstruction many states had gotten around the Fifteenth Amendment by passing literacy tests, poll taxes, and voucher systems that stole the vote away from black citizens. Literacy tests were designed to be confusing and complicated demanding that applicants answer all kinds of obscure questions about state law and history. Questions like: “Does enumeration affect the income tax levied on citizens in various states?” were so specific that they almost impossible to answer Other questions were intentionally confusing such as “Write right from the left to the right as you see it spelled here.” The final decision of whether or not you passed was up to the white registrar. Some counties used voucher systems to keep blacks from voting by requiring that they find a registered voter to vouch for them before they could themselves apply. But if by some miracle you became a registered voter there was always fear and terrorism to keep you away from the polls. The names of registered voters were often published in the local newspapers which made you an instant target of the Klan who would show up at your door in the dead of night and beat you into giving up your right to vote. The key to killing Jim Crow once and for all was through the vote. And that so the Civil Rights Movement brought the fight to Mississippi in the summer of 1964.
Civil Rights organizations including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Council on Racial Equality (CORE) began preparing for a massive get-out-the-vote campaign to register African-American voters in Mississippi. The Freedom Summer project brought thousands of black Mississippians together with out of state volunteers, mostly wealthy white college students eager to make a difference. Before heading down to Mississippi volunteers were warned to expect violence and even death. Volunteers who had come to “save the negro” were turned away. Freedom Summer was about helping black people help themselves. During orientation white volunteers were told that they would have to follow the instructions of blacks down in Mississippi. They would be living with black families and their lives depended on not rushing in and believing that they could save the place. Mississippi was such a violent place that many parents felt that their kids were going off to a war zone. And that is exactly where they were headed.
The first busload of three hundred volunteers arrived on June 15, 1964. The very next day two white students, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and James Cheney a local black student were sent to Neshoba County to investigate the recent burning Mount Zion Methodist Church. On their return, they were arrested for “speeding”. The arrest had given the sheriff enough time to organize a lynch mob. Later that night the two men were released and before they had gone a few miles were ambushed and murdered. Their station wagon and bodies had disappeared bringing the FBI in to investigate.
Can You Pass the Alabama literacy test?
Controversy raged over the disappearance. Many white Mississippians insisted that it was a prank to make Mississippi look bad. Their bodies were found on a local farm 41 days later. The murders had brought in federal intervention and made national headlines and it was probably for this reason alone that seven klansmen were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 3-7 years in prison. This was the first time since Reconstruction that white men had been convicted of violating civil rights in Mississippi.
Freedom Summer volunteers went door-to-door to convince African-Americans to register to vote. Mississippi’s terrorist state was so powerful that most blacks flat out refused to vote. Blacks who attempted to register became instant targets of white anger. Most who tried to register were fired from their jobs, beaten, harassed, or if they refused to back down would probably be murdered. That summer thousands were arrested and eighty volunteers were beaten, some critically. 37 churches were firebombed and Mississippi turned into a war zone that many people had predicted. But for black Mississippians, this was the first time that whites and blacks had come together to fight for racial equality. In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act which prohibited racial discrimination in voting bringing an end to a century of literacy tests and poll taxes. But the real teeth of the law allowed the federal government to go into the South and oversee elections to ensure that men in white hoods weren’t standing outside the polling booths. Democracy had finally come to all Americans.
Test Page