Pavithraa Sreekumar
Essay Topic #1
Freedom Summer was a nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system during 1964. It raised the consciousness of millions of people to the troubles of African-Americans and the need for change. Americans all around the country were shocked by the killing of civil rights workers and the brutality they witnessed on their televisions. For nearly a century, segregation had prevented most African-Americans in Mississippi from voting or holding public office. Segregated housing, schools, workplaces, and public accommodations denied black Mississippians access to political or economic power. 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 college students, mostly white, to work in Mississippi during the summer. Furthermore, the SNCC shunned the concept of powerful leaders. It made all its important decisions as a group, and conceived Freedom Summer as a grass-roots movement of people rising up to seize control of their own destinies. More than 500 individuals worked on the project full-time during the summer of 1964. One of those key individuals was Robert
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This organization brought about 1,000 northern students – mostly white, to Mississippi to register voters, help organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), and run Freedom Schools and community centers for local African American communities. Their challenge received national media coverage and highlighted the civil rights struggle in the state. Over the course of Freedom Summer at least three other civil rights workers were murdered and volunteers also experienced 1,000 arrests, 80 beatings, 35 shooting incidents, and 30 bombings of homes, churches, and
What made the murders even more of a national outrage is the fact that the corrupt Ku Klux Klan police attempted to cover up the crimes, and that it involved white people. Although this was another horrible moment facing the morale of activists and organizations, the Freedom Summer helped establish many more schools and influenced the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act was an enormous victory for not only African Americans, but for anyone dealing with discrimination such as women, latinos,
While guns made the civil rights and freedom movement possible — Cobb admits in his interview that, there is a missed lesson. Cobb believes that what truly defines the freedom movement was not solely guns, but grassroots organizing in rural communities in the south. When discussing the violent eruption on East Eight Street Cobb writes, “As it had in the white community, word of the arrests had spread rapidly through the black community, who felt that James’s life and possibly his mother’s life were in peril” (Cobb). Over one hundred black people organized the night that white police officers and white supremacists went out looking for James Stephenson and his mother. Black people organized themselves and were ready to protect each other and their community using guns as self-defense. However, if it were not for guns, the black community would not have been able to organize the way it had during the Freedom Movement. The students who travelled to Mississippi and other southern states during this time eventually became the students Ella Baker organized into SNCC. These students were protected while utilizing grassroots organizing by southern black people who owned guns post war. Cobb recognizes organizing as tradition within the black community stemming from slavery through the freedom movement to present day
African Americans were taught to be “second class citizens” compared to white people, bowing to white men and having to be respectful to all the unlawful rules of segregation. The Klu Klux Klan was never causing the mayhem in Mississippi; an organization called the Citizens’ Council was the group generating the strife against the black community. The Citizens’ Council was running the state because it involved many political leaders, those in charge of voting registration, the police force, and mass amounts of citizens. Efforts were made by bold African Americans to increase the number of black voters in Mississippi, but people were too afraid to challenge the white community and those that did try to register to vote were simply denied. Many times, the poor black community did not receive food during the wintertime as a punishment for “defying the white man” by trying to register to vote; this was the last straw. In the summer of 1964, the campaign called Freedom Summer, or also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, was launched in order to bring awareness to the hateful and backwards setting of
July 4, 1776 marked a very special day. A day that holds the future for many. The day that reminds us year after year up to this day and beyond that we shall never forget. How special you may ask? July 4th is known as the 4th of July. We celebrate this day with fireworks, parades, cookouts, camping, vacations, and more. What are we celebrating? We are celebrating the day America became free. The day our founding fathers adopted the Declaration of Independence. The day that 13 colonies claimed their independence from Great Britain.
This registration was ran by the "local Council of Federated Organizations", also known as COFO. There were about 100 white students that had helped register in this voting and another several hundred were invited to help make this register expand. June 15, 1964, the first 300 students arrived to vote. The following day three students, two Caucasian men and an African American man, were going to vote but strangely disappeared. Six days later their bodies were found beaten and they were killed. Because the workers thought they were surrounded by threats and violence, the workers slacked on federal protection and the investigation. The crisis between the three students brought the question, "Would the public outcry have been the same if all three victims had been black?" In Hamer's text, she went to a mass meeting not even know what a "mass meeting" was. She stated, "I was just curious to go, so I did." This meeting was ran by the "Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee," also known as, SNCC. At the meeting she was told that "black people had the right to vote." Knowing this information she got on a bus heading to Indianola along with other passengers to go register to vote. The next day she lost her job, along with her husband, and got kicked off the plantation where she had lived and worked for 18 years. She and two others were
During the freedom rides, African Americans would refuse to ride in black designated seats on public transportation. The creation of the Freedom Rides was one of the main movements of the CORE civil rights groups. One of the leaders, James Farmer, developed the type protest. The bus would travel down from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana in an almost transcontinental nonviolent-protest. Farmers plan was imitated the Journey for Reconciliation. In May of 1961, an interracial collection of people boarded two buses from Washington to travel southward in protest of segregation. Known as the Greyhound and Trailways, the buses traveled peacefully throughout the country until they entered South Carolina. White racists outside of Rock Hill attacked the voyageurs. The ride became increasingly insecure the further south they traveled. A mob firebombed and attacked the members of the Greyhound bus in Anniston and another assaulted the Trailways’ riders in Birmingham. Although CORE discontinued the rides, many other riders assembled due to outrage over the violence displayed. A new wave of activists directed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), including John Lewis, flooded Alabama where once again they were attacked in Montgomery. The significance of this the second wave of riders was that it forced the executive branch to act in response to the violence. Kennedy directed the Nation Guard to escort the riders their next destination of Mississippi. Kennedy’s brother Robert has the voyagers arrested for violating legislation set by pro-segregation officials in Mississippi and to prevent any further violence. James Farmer continued to encourage this type of protest and by the end of the season over 300 advocates had chose jail over fines to “dramatize” the issue. JFK’s forced recognition of the issues
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC was one of the most important organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in April 1960. SNCC played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years. SNCC 's major contribution was in its field work. The committee organized voter registration drives all over the South, especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. In “Freshwater Road”, the SNCC ran the “One Man, One Vote” movement office in Jackson, Mississippi. They put volunteers through training and then sent them throughout the south to teach in “Freedom Schools” to children by day and voter registration classes for the adults by night. The SNCC’s goal was to educate and empower
In order to talk about the Freedom Summer project, we first have to identify it’s roots and the history behind it. Before the Freedom Summer project, there was the civil right movement in which thousands of African Americans protested for equality. Equality didn’t mean the term referred in the court case Plessy vs Ferguson “separate but equal.” African Americans wanted to end the era of segregation, this include not having to use lower quality public facilities than whites, not having to give their seats in a bus if a white person wanted to sit there, and the right to vote. With the help of different civil right activist such as Bayard Rustin, Jo Ann Robinson, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and all the people that marched and protested against
There are many things the people in Liberty Ranch High School can do to make the school much healthier. I purpose Liberty Ranch should do activities to help us with our eating habits like keeping a food journal, inviting a professional health speaker to help make the school healthier, make food posters or a nutrition class.
The next goal in the movement was desegregation on public transportation. The Freedom Riders of 1961 were mostly young and evenly divided between whites and African Americans. Aboard two buses, the group drove through the South to test segregation laws through the use of non-violence. However, while driving through Alabama, the buses were attacked by a white mob. Though the Freedom Rides were short-lived, they inspired many others to participate in the civil rights movement.
Victory was seen months later when the same four students that initiated the movement were served at the counter. Prior to the sit-ins, youth showed their strength during the movement. The Little Rock Nine, a group of nine black high school students, were the first to integrate into an all white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. These nine students, despite being blocked from attending the school by the governor, showed how serious the United States was about educational integration; President Eisenhower himself issued an order for federal troops and the National Guard to make sure that the students made it to school safely. In 1962, success came in the form of James Meredith when he became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Although he was also met with resistance, 5,000 governmental troops were sent by the president’s orders to dispel the chaos. SNCC or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formed in favor of youth and inspired by the SCLC. This organization gave young African Americans an important role to play in the movement and increased the peaceful, unified nature of the Civil Rights Movement. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee initiated events like “freedom rides” where student volunteers tested laws prohibiting segregation on public transportation and was not just for blacks, but other people with the same
Wednesday in Mississippi was formed in 1964 with the aim of aiding the project of voter registration during Freedom Summer, which its’ goal was to increase the number of electors in Mississippi. The main reason for developing this organization was due to the oppression of the black Mississippians by the white Mississippians through abuse. Also, the police could attack and beat the blacks and arrest them falsely. The local authorities, the state, and the Ku Klux Klan also carried the attacks and killed three civil rights activities. This organization was a civil right organization, which involved people from different faiths and different races in the United States. The sponsors of this organization were The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that riding the bus can get one hurt and killed and how non-volient acts can lead to so much hate and violence. The Freedom Rides help bring attention to national level. The level of violence is extreme in response to a non-violent movement. The white supremacy was trying its best to make the colored population inferior. The segregation is a symbol of fear and hate. The press and television is a big part in the success of the movement. They help shape the public opinion toward segregation. The media brought the problem to our attention through dramatic and often disturbing photos and reports.
When they arrived, they were stopped by Alabama state troopers, who then “knocked the marchers to the ground...struck them with sticks...and chased them back over the bridge”(Klein). The brutal beatings from the troopers ended their rallies, leaving them unable to fight at that moment. Their attempts to make change would have succeeded if it were not for the uncontrollable force of the police. Similarly, in an article called “Freedom Summer”, black Mississippians and few white volunteers came together to peacefully protest black voting rights. Before the Freedom Summer movement, “less than seven percent of the state’s eligible black voters were registered to
Most people opted not to return to Summerfest on Saturday, given it was July 4th- and the smaller sized audiences were quite noticeable. The weatheron Saturday was just as refreshing as the day before, and the fact that the festival wasn't at full-capacity made it a lot easier to move around to each show. Despite not having a large crowd, the performers on Saturday put on very memorable shows.