Freedom Summer Project Analysis

How did the murder of Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Trial bring to light the racial prejudice in the South and how much did it push the Civil Rights Movement?

In the 1965 speech, We Shall Overcome, Lyndon B. Johnson discusses the copious amounts of cruel racial discrimination occurring in America and his plan to eradicate it. This speech follows the recent events that occurred in Selma, Alabama when African Americans were attacked while preparing to march to Montgomery in protest of voting discrimination. Johnson asserts his stance on racial equality by using compelling anaphora, the specific use of pronouns, appeals to pathos through references to the bible, and appeals to logos through the use of historical evidence. Johnson successfully utilizes these rhetorical devices in order to communicate to Americans of all races, religions, and political parties, his plan to eliminate discrimination, as well as encourage every American to embrace diversity and equality and spread his idea of a “Great Society.” Although the idea of a President with allegiances to the white southern population taking initiative towards equality was a very controversial and unfamiliar concept, Johnson does an exceptional job of maintaining an authoritative, yet inspiring tone throughout his speech in order to persuade Americans that equality is the first step to a greater nation.

On March 15, 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson delivered “We Shall Overcome” in Washington, D.C. (Kreitner, Richard.). According to the words in the speech, in certain parts of the country African Americans did not have an equal right to vote. They would be informed that it was the incorrect day or ridiculed with impossible questions, solely because they were black. Johnson spoke this speech with integrity trying to conquer these racial discriminations and get the Voting Rights Act passed. He stressed that accomplishing equal citizenship takes more than just legal right. He wanted to ensure everyone that they were given an opportunity to escape poverty.

The Emmett Till murder shined a light on the horrors of segregation and racism on the United States. Emmett Till, a young Chicago teenager, was visiting family in Mississippi during the month of August in 1955, but he was entering a state that was far more different than his hometown. Dominated by segregation, Mississippi enforced a strict leash on its African American population. After apparently flirting with a white woman, which was deeply frowned upon at this time in history, young Till was brutally murdered. Emmett Till’s murder became an icon for the Civil Rights Movement, and it helped start the demand of equal rights for all nationalities and races in the United States.

"If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question American. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hook because of our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?" Fannie Lou Hammer before the Democratic National Convention, 1964. Fannie Lou Hamer is best known for her involvement in the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC). The SNCC was at the head of the American voter registration drives of the 1960's. Hamer was a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP), which ultimately succeeded in electing many blacks to national office in the state of Mississippi.

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,

The death of a young African American male in 1955 haunted the south and the African American society. Images of Emmett Till hanging in a tree were plastered on television and in newspapers for Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, and David Richmond to see while attending North Carolina A & T College in 1960. These four African American men would soon become known as the Greensboro Four after instigating a sit-in at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their courage and determination ignited a movement to end segregation not only in their state but across the nation. History was being made that day as the young men sat at the counter, customers inside watching as the events unfolded, and the impact of this incident permeating across American’s eyes.

America has a long history of oppression, discrimination and injustices towards African Americans, however the 1960s has brought important political and social changes. People who have not lived through this decade of change can gather some information of this time through historical documents such as letters and films that portray true events. An example of a film that is based on a true story is “Mississipi Burning” and a powerful historical document is “A Letter from Burmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther king. Each of these materials describes/portrays some of the issues African-American faced during the 1960s, specifically in the south. After analyzing these materials, we are able to understand some of what African-Americans endured during the 1960s.

Despite nearly one hundred years passing since the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern States were still faced with the most distinct forms of racism. The so-called “Jim Crow” laws that were present in United States at the time, served to segregate blacks and whites from all aspects of public life, including schools, public transport and juries. Often faced with extreme right-wing terrorist groups such as the white supremacist Klu Klux Klan, many among the African American community chose to live in a society of oppression that to actively campaign for equal rights for all humans regardless of the colour of their skin. It wasn’t until the 1950’s and 60’s that the people attempted to challenge the established order by engaging in influential protest movements with the help of key activist groups and their leaders. In particular, one key example of a powerful protest campaign was that which occurred in 1965 in Selma, a small town in Alabama. Here, the African American community united in an effort to ensure that all citizens were equal before the law in regards to their ability to register to vote. Their work in banding together and marching from Selma to the state capital Montgomery, was vastly important to both the Civil Rights Movement as a whole, as well as the assurance of the Black vote within the United States. Consequently, this essay seeks to emphasize just how influential this act of protest was to the movement as a whole, whilst analysing the

During the 1960’s of American history violent acts were aimed at African Americans in the name of racism and segregation. In a case such as this one, many would seek refuge from the government, but to little surprise, cries for refuge went unanswered. Making matters worse was the fact that the Government allowed segregation to continue due to legal documents in many southern states. Acceptable forms of oppression were separated into four categories: racial segregation; voter suppression, in southern states; denial of economic opportunity; private acts of violence aimed at African Americans. At this time, many civil rights laws were

the speech “With Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer,” Malcolm affirms that because the black man is denied the right to vote in the south of the forty-six committees that had control the foreign and domestic direction of the country in 1964 twenty-three were in the hands of Southern racists. Another account concerning voting in the south, Malcolm

In Birmingham, Alabama between 1957 and 1962 seventeen black churches and homes had been bombed, racial tension continued to grow, and more and more African Americans were being killed. Although the population of Birmingham was 40% African American, there seemed little hope for a political solution to the racial divide; of 80,000 registered voters, only 10,000 were black due to a barrier that was placed on the new state constitution of Alabama. One of these barriers was an annual poll tax that had to pay for two years before the new election season. African Americans in Mississippi could barely afford the necessities in order to live such as food, clothes, and a roof over their head. African Americans were the poorest part of Mississippi’s population. The other barrier that was placed in the new state constitution was a literacy test. It required a person seeking to register to vote to read a section of the state constitution and explain it to the county clerk, a white man, who processed voter registrations. This new law was setup for African Americans to fail. Along with many other civil rights leaders and members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Dr. Martin Luther King traveled to Birmingham, Alabama to lead and participate in several boycotts, marches, and picketing leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King’s arrest. While being incarcerated, Dr. King wrote an open letter more known as The “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In this letter, King highlights many

Although I wasn’t in Mississippi during the ‘Freedom Summer’, I had a solid understanding of how life was during the ‘Freedom Summer’. This was years of racism and segregation towards the blacks in the US during the Civil Rights Movement. My aspect type was racism, and I learned of its impact on life through our analysis in the class of The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker, an epistolary novel about the lives of black people in rural dominated white racist Georgia during the 1920’s-50’s. Furthermore, we discussed Nelson Mandela’s Inaugural Speech in class, and how Mandela fought for Independence from the white racist government. With extra research of the Freedom Summer project launched by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Freedom Summer or the Mississippi Summer Project was the brainchild of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or SNCC. The project had four main goals, to expand African American voter registration, to organize a legally constituted “Freedom Democratic Party” that will challenge the whites-only Mississippi Democratic Party, to establish “freedom schools” and to open community centers where legal and medical assistance were available. In order to achieve these goals SNCC specifically recruited 800 white students under the age of 21. “Most of the volunteers were white students who had participated in civil rights activities in the North…The fact that the volunteers were expected to forgo summer jobs, to pay for their own transportation, and to provide their own bond money in the event of arrest ensured that affluent students predominated.” These students joined the already solid African American activist core in the South.

It was a time of conflict, excitement, and confusion in the United States. And this was also “Black Power” of the Civil Rights Movement. Moody at that time was a member of NAACP. She was involved in her first sit-in, and her social science professor, John Salter, who was in charge of NAACP asked her to be the spokesman for a team that would sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter (Moody 1968, 286). Although she could go to jail for this, but she still agreed. After that, she joined CORE and continued to fight for the voting rights (Moody 1968, 311). Following passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the struggle for racial justice moved to the next battleground: voting rights in the Deep South. The campaign was already under way in places like Selma, Alabama, where local activists, facing intense white resistance, asked Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference for support (Ayers 2010, 780). Black voter registration in the South was one of the great accomplishments of the civil rights movement. Within months of its passage, more than 2 million black southern were registered to vote. Most supported the Democratic Party of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, which had endorsed the cause of civil rights (Ayers 2010, 782).