The Documentary ' Freedom Summer '

Throughout the American South, of many Negro’s childhood, the system of segregation determined the patterns of life. Blacks attended separate schools from whites, were barred from pools and parks where whites swam and played, from cafes and hotels where whites ate and slept. On sidewalks, they were expected to step aside for whites. It took a brave person to challenge this system, when those that did suffered a white storm of rancour. Affronting this hatred, with assistance from the Federal Government, were nine courageous school children, permitted into the 1957/8 school year at Little Rock Central High. The unofficial leader of this band of students was Ernest Green.

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

Booker T. Washington's account of his own perseverence in securing his education is poignantly told in Up From Slavery. Yet with Washington's influence, a shift began from educating students in a liberal arts tradition to an industrial training mode. Unfortunately, by the turn of the century, with the help of the benefactor Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the Hampton-Tuskegee Idea had come to represent the ideological antithesis of the educational and social movement begun by ex-slaves (33). In order for freed slaves to fully participate in a democracy, a classical liberal curriculum was adopted in post-Civil War black, elementary, normal and collegiate schools. As James D. Anderson aptly points out,

In the case of Robert Russa High School, Black residents lobbied the Prince Edward County school district to erect a separate African-American high school. Their request was met with tepid support from the local school board. However, “under pressure from local black professional men, during the 1920s the Prince Edward County School Board reluctantly added high school grades to the all-black Mary E. Branch Elementary School. The blame for such slow and inadequate effort was always placed on the lack of funds. Although it was true that financing problems existed, all-white schools still tended to fare better.” (VA GOV). The façade of “separate but equal” continued to shape political rhetoric for the Prince Edward County School Board. However, Robert Russa High School’s creation and establishment amid white institutional pushback demonstrated the power of “Black persistence” in Farmville,

In Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “The Resegregation of Jefferson County” shows the event that recently happened in Gardendale, Alabama where the group of parents named itself FOCUS (Future of Our Community Utilizing School) try to separate Gardendale’s schools from Jefferson County school district. One of the Focus creator, David Salters, explained that the primary goal of operation for secession is to take control over the local education and local funds, which would provide a better environment and better future for local students. Jones argues that the main reason for secession is to separate white community from the black population of the county. This attempt of secession is a similarity of a landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, and Jefferson County is one of a hundred school system that still constrained by desegregation court order.

Once formed these WCC used social networks and propaganda to push their white supremacy agenda. Dozens of different pamphlets were created to show the public how to maintain a Jim Crow society. Some of these were made to show kids the difference between whites and blacks in education, some detailed how a white segregationist might maintain order in his community, and some justified unequal treatment based on imaginary biological differences. In high school’s the WCC also sponsored essay contest, promoting the idea of White Supremacy, while supporting their youth’s higher education through these scholarships. TV

In the Summer of 1964, the Mississippi Summer Project, also known as Freedom Summer, was organized by several Civil Rights organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee and the Congress on Racial Equality. The event that caused the start of Freedom Summer were that many African-Americans were not registered to vote, this was because the southern states had implemented literacy tests that were unfair and could be interpreted differently, and Poll Taxes which were ridiculous amounts to pay ("Freedom Summer"). Other causes include the case of Plessy Vs. Ferguson, which stated the “Separate but Equal” clause, and also Racial segregation. Freedom Summer Volunteers included White Northerners, and the organization was made to focus on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Voter Registration, Freedom Schools, and Community Centers (“Timeline: Freedom Summer”). There was a need for the Freedom Summer because Many African-American People in the south were being oppressed by Literacy Tests and Poll Taxes.

Alfred H. Kelly, author of “The School Desegregation Case,” begins his account of the journey the NAACP lawyers took to succeed in Brown v. Board of Education of the City of Topeka, with the minor but evident improvement of the political and economic status acquired by Blacks since the passing of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Blacks increasingly became more influential; fighting to escape the “inferior status” of a stranded “ex-slave” and progressing towards the “genuine integration of the Negro into the social, economic, and political fabric of American life” (Kelly 245-6). Such improvements between the Plessy and Brown cases enabled the victory of desegregation for the revolutionary NAACP lawyers. Political influence expanded for Blacks who made up an “elite” of professional individuals in large cities in the North. The power to vote and their “alliances with local urban political machines” gave them some input on local decisions and later on a more national scale under FDR’s New Deal. A wave of “jobs, pay ratings, union memberships” and intensified acknowledgements of “the cold realities of American racial segregation,” extended the economic power available to Blacks during WWII (Kelly 247). The “altered position of the Negro in America;” from neglected and helpless individuals, to influential “lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, social workers, [and] ministers,” was necessary for the social, economic and political power earned

In preparation for the movement it was noted that leading up to 1964, Mississippi had received far too little attention for how the state treated blacks. The Freedom Summer Project’s main goal was to raise awareness about the lack of voting rights for African Americans in the south and the summer of 1964 was chosen to push this movement because it was an election year. One of the main pieces of the project was setting up Freedom Schools to help educate black children and adults on things such as basic civil rights, black history, and American History. White Southerners felt threatened by the project and characterized the goals of the Freedom Summer differently than what they actually were. A June 1964 article published in the Charleston Post claimed that “(Freedom Summer) had nothing to do with voting” and that the two goals of the project were military occupation of Mississippi and to force socialist economics on the

Growing up as a Negro woman at the turn of the twentieth century is no easy task. Being born with strikes against me and no education is a struggle. The partisan treatments of segregation, social restrictions, lynching, and having no voting rights just don’t sit well with me. Many others don’t fully understand what it’s like to truly start from the bottom and that’s why we need courageous leaders like William Edward Burghardt DuBois and Booker T. Washington to advocate for equitable dealings amongst the races. Washington’s plan had many shortcomings and I’m so glad DuBois devised a plan superior to his.

“Public schools for black children received less funding… Things like bathrooms were rarely cleaned.” (source 1). African American citizens’ segregated areas faced awful quality, unlike the whites’ property. African Americans were not treated fairly and they lacked respect and equality. “Segregationists threatened to hold protests and physically block the students from entering the school.”

African American were fighting for rights to own land and “in January 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman set aside part of the coast south of Charleston for black settlement”(437). Owning land was one of the main ways African American could build a wealth for themselves and gain their independance which they were not going to give up. African Americans were no longer going to allow whites to mistreat them. Despite the fact that they were “forced to return to the planters’ fields, they resisted efforts to restore slavelike conditions”(453). Once they had received of taste of what their free life is like, African American were not going to lose that right and were determined to fight against it. African American were determined to no longer be the white’s slaves. To further their independence “instead of working for wages, a South Carolinian observed, “‘the negroes all seem disposed to rent land, “‘ which increased their independence from whites”’(453). African American began renting land where they were more independent from their white masters and allowed to make decisions on their own. Along with their growing independence, African American were also having a bigger role in

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.

The summer of 1964 also known as the Freedom Summer was a time of social change in Mississippi. The Document Project 26 in Exploring American Histories a Survey with Sources (second addition) highlights the success and failures through primary sources. The Student of Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Understood the magnitude of such a movement and outlined the goals of the Freedom Summer in the Prospectus for Mississippi Freedom Sumer (1964). This document outlines the main missions of eliminating racial oppression by registering blacks to vote, and the organization’s complimentary mission to establish freedom schools for the black community.

Virginia, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In Loving v. Virginia, Virginia enacted a law that prohibited marriage between a black and white person. They would get get punished if they did. The Supreme Court overturned that law to preserve marriage as a fundamental right. In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was the first school board trying to desegregate, especially using busing with all races. The Supreme Court's judgement was to hope it would be a fine experience. So this is the first district to try to stop the schools harass African-Americans. The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case was when a white student was denied admission to a medical school despite the student that made it had worse scores than him. He was put in because of a quota system. Therefore, the Supreme Court new that it was unfair that he makes the school with an immediate guarantee. They said that they couldn't use quota systems based on race. "Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend" is one of the most famous quotes from Martin Luther King and hopefully that quote is true (“Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes at