Program Information

The 1964 campaign by civil rights activists to register African-American voters in Mississippi became known as the "Freedom Summer."

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Transcript

Lead: The 1964 campaign by civil rights activists to register African-American voters in Mississippi became known as the "Freedom Summer."

Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After the landmark Brown Supreme Court decision, civil rights groups worked hard to end segregation and political discrimination in the deep South. There such practices were firmly entrenched and change was strongly resisted by many whites. In the summer of 1964 a coalition of civil rights organizations--including CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (sometimes known as SNCC)--focused their efforts on Mississippi since just 6.7% of blacks were registered to vote. That number was intentionally kept small, due in large part to institutional obstructionist practices such as requiring African Americans to pay poll taxes and pass tests that were not required of white voters.

About a thousand of the volunteers that descended on Mississippi that summer were members of SNCC, which had been launched in early 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina and grew out of the "sit-in" movement that sought equal service at lunch counters and other public places. Many of the SNCC volunteers were upper-middle class white students from northern colleges, and this attracted national attention. Hundreds of reporters were on hand to cover their voter registration efforts in Mississippi and, tragically, the violent resistance that climaxed in the murders of three civil rights workers: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. The turbulence in Mississippi and other parts of the south galvanized the nation and prodded Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, the following year, the Voting Rights Act--both of which succeeded in removing much of the legal infrastructure of white supremacy.

Research assistance by Heidi Yates and Ann H. Johnson. The producer of A Moment In Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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