1 of 36

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS OCCUR when

EVERYDAY PEOPLE

ACT COLLECTIVELY

at the

RIGHT HISTORICAL MOMENT

January 2013

2 of 36

1960 Sit Ins

1955 Montgomery

bus boycott

1964 COFO

Freedom Summer

1961-3 Freedom Rides

Some of the MAJOR EVENTS OF THE SOUTHERN FREEDOM MOVEMENT

1954 Brown v Board

Leading to:

CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS

1957 1960 1964 1965

AND Freedom from Fear and Freedom of Association

BUT NOT FREEDOM FROM POVERTY

OR FREEDOM FROM DISCRIMINATION

--1954 Brown v Board -- overturns Plessy’s separate but equal clause -- functioned as a trumpet blast, calling people to cause of freedom.

--1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott -- Rosa parks arrest initiates a 13 month boycott that ends with U.S. Supreme Court declaring bus segregation in local buses unconstitutional. Joann Robinson and the Women’s Political council engineer the boycott, inviting King to become president of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association

--1960s Sit-Ins -- initiated by black college students in Nashville TN and Greensboro NC, sit ins at department store lunch counters spread throughout the upper south, many ending segregation in all public places in the towns. Students gather at Shaw University at Ella Baker’s invite to create SNCC

--1961-- Freedom Rides -- CORE seeks to challenge states violating Morgan v Virginia

--1964 -- Mississippi Freedom Summer Project (aka Freedom Summer) -- 1962-3, attempts to register blacks fail in Mississippi. Federal government refusing to help, being told by MI Senators

--1965 -- Selma -- It took 3 attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery to bring attention to the violation of black civil rights. Five months after the third and successful march, Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The successful passage of this act marked the end of major milestones for the Southern Freedom Movement and the movement itself transformed into a new stage with Black Power coming to the forefront.

1957: civil rights commission and court injunctions

1960: federal inspection of voter registration rolls

1964: outlawed Jim Crow

1965: voting rights

Civil Rights Act of 1957 he Civil Rights Division was established by order of Attorney General William P. Rogers, giving the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights a distinct division to command. Previously, civil rights lawyers enforced Reconstruction-era laws from within the Criminal Division. The bill provided guarantees for African-American voting rights in the South. It did so, in part, by establishing a voting-referee system. Federal district judges were charged with appointing referees to enroll voters in areas where the government had noted local authorities denying voting rights in an addendum to the Act made in April 1960. Other changes made in 1960 required local authorities to maintain voting records for up to twenty two months, in order for federal investigators to determine if any of the law had been violated. In addition, the act contained provisions making it illegal to interfere with federal court orders by threats of force (to subdue mob violence relating to then-recent school desegregation disputes. ) The act also called for the creation of the Civil Rights Commission to investigate issues regarding race relations.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, July 2, 1964) was landmark legislation in the United States that outlawed segregation in the US schools and public places. First conceived to help African Americans, the bill was amended prior to passage to protect women in courts, and explicitly included white people for the first time. It also started the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In order to circumvent limitations on the federal use of the Equal Protection Clause handed down by the Civil Rights Cases, the law was passed under the Commerce Clause. Once it was implemented, its effects were far reaching and had tremendous long-term impacts on the whole country. It prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, invalidating the Jim Crow laws in the southern US. It became illegal to compel segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring. Powers given to enforce the bill were initially weak, but were supplemented during later years.

National Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. § 1973–1973aa-6) outlawed the requirement that would-be voters in the United States take literacy tests to qualify to register to vote, and it provided for federal registration of voters in areas that had less than 50% of eligible minority voters registered. The Act also provided for Department of Justice oversight to registration, and the Department's approval for any change in voting law in districts that had used a "device" to limit voting and in which less than 50% of the population was registered to vote in 1964.

3 of 36

Some key components of a successful social movement:

Get Ready to Be Ready

Personal relationship and community building,
Building an infrastructure
Development of local leadership,
Creating coalitions,

Identifying the problem and doing your homework,
Strategic use of the arts,
Strategic use of nonviolent direct resistance,
Learning how to deal with the contradictions within the movement,
and being in the right historical moment.

4 of 36

ORGANIZATIONS:

--Build Infrastructure and Coalitions

--Develop experienced activists

1910 --- NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

1942 --- CORE

Congress of Racial Equality

1957--- SCLC

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

1960 --- SNCC (snick)

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

1962-4 --- COFO

Council of Federated Organizations = NAACP, CORE, SCLC, SNCC

5 of 36

-------Local independent civil rights organizations-------

e.g., Women’s Political Council

e.g., Montgomery Improvement Association

e.g., Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights

e.g., Nonviolent Action Group

1957 SCLC

Churches

1960 SNCC

Black College Campuses

Friends of SNCC

1910 NAACP

NAACP local chapters

Youth chapters

The Importance of Infrastructure

1932 - -------------Highlander---------------------------------------------

1942 CORE

Local chapters

1925 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids 1950

1908 Federal Council of Churches------------1950 National Council of Churches

1919 Associated Negro Press--------------------------------------1964

1837-1861-1890------ HBCU’s-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fred Shuttlesworth

C.T. Vivian

Jo Ann Robinson

Esau Jenkins

Myles Horton

A. Philip Randolph

The Southern Freedom Movement, from 1954-65, dismantled segregation in the South and ended the long reign of terror through lynching. It was the beginning of a national social movement. Veterans of the Freedom Movement left the South to provide leadership and experience to the other movements that sprang up during and afterwards such as the Farmworkers, Women’s movement, Anti-war Movement, Free Speech Movement, the Black Panther Movement and more.

What happened in the South during these 11 years did not just spring up out of nothing. There was a long history of Getting Ready to Be Ready-- the development of organizations, the practice of organizing, the creation of an infrastructure that supported those who finally said, “enough is enough.” To successfully fight the power structure takes time, money, organization, insight, discipline, and the dovetailing of a variety of historical circumstances. Freedom Summer could not have happened if people hadn’t been organizing Sleeping car porters in the 1920s; local NAACP chapters in the 1930s; CORE local chapters in the 1940s and the National Council of Churches in the 1950s. Local and independent organizations allowed local people to gain experience in organizing, making mistakes they learned from. Highlander provided a place where people like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Bernice Robinson, Esau Jenkins, Annelle Ponder and many, many others could go and talk to each other, share stories, learn from each other; learn how to analyse their experiences and learn to teach others how to analyses their experiences. Education and Organizing are two halves of the same coin.

6 of 36

World War II

-----Cold War------------------------------------------

1960 Sit Ins

1955 Montgomery

bus boycott

King

1957 SCLC

SNCC

1910 NAACP

1942 CORE

1964 COFO

Freedom Summer

1908 Springfield IL

Race riots

Panic of 1907

Northern Migration

Worl War I

1961-3 Freedom Rides

NAACP local chapters in S.

bolstered by black WW II vets

CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS

1957 1960 1964 1965

1955 Bandung Conference

African anti-colonial movements

LYNCHING

Importance of

The

Historical

Moment

Gandhi

1965 Selma to Montgomery March

Social movements happen in the context of larger historical forces:

NAACP formed in response to a “call” that went out after the national reporting of the Springfield race riots. The Springfield riots were not unusual as many race riots occurred throughout the south and north from 1880s onwards as working class whites were led to believe that black workers posed a threat to the white working class status. Perhaps this one struck a chord with white middle class people like Mary White Ovington, John Dewey and Jane Addams because it occurred in Lincoln’s hometown. The Panic of 1907 and the systematic turning back of Reconstruction are larger historical forces at work creating the context for white working class anxiety.

CORE and SCLC influenced by Gandhi’s tactics of direct nonviolent resistance

Many Southern Black Vets returning from WW II were recruited by local NAACP chapters, and new chapters able to spring up. Black vets experienced white Europeans who did not have the same racism as white southerners; fighting for democracy abroad so wanted to keep fighting for democracy at home

After WW II, the U.S. waged a Cold War against USSR. It was bad PR to be preventing blacks from voting and holding office in the war for the hearts and minds of the third world, and especially for the fight for the loyalty of newly independent African states -- so passing Civil Rights Acts seemed a useful foreign policy tactic. When Kennedy shot, Johnson was able to use the moment to get the 1964 act passed. The disappearance of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney also was an important event to leverage that bill into law.

7 of 36

World War II

-----Cold War----------------

1960 Sit Ins

1961-3 Freedom Rides

1964 MS Freedom Summer

1965 Selma AL

NAACP

provides legal support

to those arrested, beaten, and jailed

1908 Springfield IL

Race riots

End of Reconstruction 1877

Gandhi

1930s SOUTH:

local chapters

youth chapters

1963 Kennedy shot

Bandung Conference

African anti-colonial movements

1954 Brown v Board

1944 Smith v Allwright

1946 Morgan v Virginia

1917

Silent March

1915

Protests against

Birth of a Nation

LYNCHING

1960 Boyton v Virginia

W. E. B. Dubois

Ida B. Wells

MEDGAR EVERS

in Jackson, MS

CHARLES HOUSTON

1930s: designed strategy and recruited braintrust

that overturned Plessy

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

1910 NAACP

Roy Wilkins

Thurgood Marshall NAACP LDF 1940

Walter White

NAACP legal and education defense fund created in 1937 -- Charles Houston at Howard Law School begins to design the legal overthrow of Plessy v Ferguson. This strategy included

Smith v Allwright -- unconstitutionality of the white primary

Morgan v Virginia -- no segregation on interstate buses

Boyton v Virginia -- no segregation in services to interstate buses

culminating in Brown v Board (5 cases bundled together) -- overturned Plessy v Ferguson (separate can be equal)

LEGAL DECISIONS provided the opportunities for direct action by CORE, SCLC and SNCC

Birth of a Nation (1915)-- DW Griffith’s film was an important part of the creation of the PLANTATION MYTH (white slave owners paternalistic; Civil War about chivalry and states rights; Reconstruction a dark period of crime by black men against white women; End of Reconstruction was return to law and order and racial harmony)

Silent March in NYC (1917) against Lynching: demonstrators marched as Boy Scouts distributed pamphlets explaining their cause.

“We march because we want to make impossible a repetition of Waco, Memphis, and East St. Louis, by rousing the conscience of the country and bringing the murderers of our brothers, sisters, and innocent children to justice. We march because we are thoroughly opposed to Jim-Crow Cars, Segregation, Discrimination, Disenfranchisement, LYNCHING, and the host of evils that are forced on us. . . . We march because we want our children to live in a better land and enjoy fairer conditions than have fallen to our lot

James Weldon Johnson is first black NCAACP field secretary and begins to build his “southern empire” in the late 1930s, creating local NAACP chapters in the south

WITHOUT NAACP LOCAL AND YOUTH CHAPTERS IN MISSISSIPPI, SNCC FIELD SECRETARIES (ORGANIZERS) WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO CONNECT WITH LOCAL MISSISSIPIANS AND CREATE THE MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM DEMOCRATIC PARTY

8 of 36

9 of 36

14 year old boy and his 35 year old mother

Picture taken for postcard reproduction

50 people on bridge, posing for several hours. The photographer had to row out into the middle of the river and upstream enough to get everyone in the picture.

Oklahoma, 1911

“ . . . Several weeks previous, when a sheriff’s posse searched the cabin of a black family named Nelson, living in Okemah. Several cows were missing from a nearby ranch, and the posse was looking for stolen meat. During the search, Nelson’s son, a teenager, shot and killed a deputy. Laura Nelson, knowing how the deed would be received, claimed to have shot the man in order to protect her son. But her innocence was common knowledge. Nelson’s father pled guilty to stealing cattle . . . A few weeks later . . . [mob of forty men go to the jail and demand to see the Nelsons. Went to the boy and according to the newspaper account] ‘stifled and gagged’ him. ‘Next they. . .took the woman out.’ [took them to the bridge in the black section of the county] and lynched them]. One newspaper also remarked,’ While the general sentiment is adverse to the method, it is generally thought that the Negroes got what would have been due them under process of law” (J. W. Davidson, “They Say” Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race, pp. 7-8)

10 of 36

Waco, Texas---1916

"This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”

White society used lynching as a means to destroy the threat of black political and economic power and to terrorize African Americans into submission to white supremacy. Ida B. Wells wrote the Red Record in order to destroy White Supremacist’s defence of lynching. The NAACP’s first major campaign was an anti-lynching campaign.

Between 1882 and 1930, Texans committed 492 lynchings. By most accounts, the most horrible of these was the 1916 slaying of Jesse Washington, a Waco farmhand who had confessed to the rape and murder of a white farmer's wife. A jury of 12 whites deliberated for four minutes before declaring Washington guilty. They called for the death penalty, but before authorities could act, he was dragged from the courtroom, doused with coal oil, and suspended alive over a bonfire. A witness wrote:

Washington was beaten with shovels and bricks … was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire. … Wailing, the boy attempted to climb up the skillet hot chain. For this, the men cut off his fingers.

Washington's corpse was put in a cloth bag and dragged behind a car to Robinson, where it was hung from a pole. Northern newspapers condemned the lynching, but Texas was largely unrepentant. The image above is taken from a postcard (!); on the back someone has written, "This is the barbeque we had last night. My picture is to the left with a cross over it. Your son, Joe.”

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/223/503701249_281c0f2b17_o.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.futilitycloset.com/category/death/page/2/&h=253&w=384&sz=16&hl=en&start=210&um=1&tbnid=rvc1NfRS1H267M:&tbnh=81&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlynching%26start%3D200%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DKBx%26sa%3DN

11 of 36

NAACP Silent March - 1917

12 of 36

World War II

-----Cold War--------

1955 Montgomery

bus boycott

King

1957 SCLC

Lynching highpoint 1898

Plessy 1896

Gandhi

Citizenship schools

1963 Kennedy shot

African anti-colonial movements

Southern Christian

Leadership Council

1964 COFO

Freedom Summer

Freedom Schools

JO ANN ROBINSON

SEPTIMA CLARK

E.D. NIXON

ELLA BAKER

KING AND BAYARD RUSTIN

The very beginnings of the SCLC can be traced back to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. carried out by the newly established Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Martin Luther King, Jr. served as President and Ralph David Abernathy served as Program Director. leaders of the MIA and other protest groups met in Atlanta on January 10 – 11, 1957, to form a regional organization and coordinate protest activities across the South. 60 persons from 10 states assembled and announced the founding of the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration. Further organizing was done at a meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 14, 1957. The organization shortened its name to Southern Leadership Conference, elected Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President. At its first convention in Montgomery in August 1957, the Southern Leadership Conference adopted the current name, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Basic decisions made by the founders at these early meeting included the adoption of nonviolent mass action as the cornerstone of strategy, the affiliation of local community organizations with SCLC across the South, and a determination to make the SCLC movement open to all, regardless of race, religion, or background.

http://sclcnational.org/net/content/item.aspx?mode=p&s=25461.0.12.2607

The idea of Citizenship Schools came out of discussions among Myles Horton of the Highlander Folk School, Esau Jenkins and Bernice Robinson of Johns Island, SC. Jenkins and Robinson wanted to get blacks to register to vote, but the literacy requirements prevented most blacks from voting. In setting up a school to teach literacy FOR THE PURPOSE OF REGISTERING TO VOTE, Robinson taught a handful of adults in the first Citizenship school. The idea was simple enough that it spread on its own. The SCLC offered support for these schools. The Freedom Schools in 1964 Mississippi were inspired by the Citizenship Schools of the SCLC.

Excellent Film: BOYCOTT

13 of 36

World War II

-----Cold War--------

1942 CORE

Lynching

Plessy 1896

Gandhi

1961-3 Freedom Rides

1963 Kennedy shot

1964 COFO

Freedom Summer

Community centers

African anti-colonial movements

Congress of Racial

Equality CORE

1947 Journey of Reconciliation

James Farmer

Picture is James Farmer in 1964 (co-founder of CORE, it’s first national director from 1942-44, reelected national director in 1961, architect of Freedom Rides, resigned as director in 1966)

founded in 1942 as the Committee of Racial Equality by an interracial group of students in Chicago. PACIFISTS -- PHILOSOPHICAL NVR -- TRAINED KING AND SIT IN STUDENTS

Many of these students were members of the Chicago branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a pacifist organization

CORE started as a nonhierarchical, decentralized organization funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of its members.

James Farmer traveled the country with Bayard Rustin, a field secretary with FOR, and recruited activists at FOR meetings.

almost entirely of white middle-class college students from the Midwest. CORE pioneered the strategy of nonviolent direct action, especially the tactics of sit-ins, jail-ins, and freedom rides.

http://www.core-online.org/history/history.htm The 1947 Journey was the first systematic test of Morgan v Virginia: an opportunity to create a national campaign, which would call attention to their cause. Sixteen men, eight white and eight black, left Washington on April 9, l947. two-week trip, the group traveled to Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, with half of the group traveling on Greyhound and half traveling on Trailways. The group’s challenge was not to public facilities in bus stations but confined itself to segregated seating on buses.

The riders discovered that most drivers and passengers were unfamiliar with the law they were testing, and that white passengers were generally “apathetic” rather than violent. Rustin and Houser noted that black passengers, at first nervous at the riders’ actions, on occasion moved forward when they observed the interracial pairs riding together at the front of the bus. Houser and Rustin claimed the ride as a victory for CORE’s direct action principles.

Freedom Rides to the deep south -- but abandoned

The Freedom Ride left Washington DC on May 4, 1961. It was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown decision.

May 14, Anniston Alabama, mob attacks bus and beats up riders - negotiations fail to guarantee safety, riders fly to New Orleans

Veteran students from Nashville sit ins (SNCC) take over and go from Birmingham to Mississippi

Arrested in Mississippi and sentenced to Parchman Penitentiary

More riders replaced them, got arrested, until almost 300 in jail.

SO -- Mississippi is the real bastion of segregation!! During Freedom Summer, CORE provided staffing and funding for Community centers throughout Mississippi -- they were often the “libraries” that Freedom Schools relied upon.

14 of 36

1960 Sit ins at HBCUs

THE RIGHT HISTORICAL MOMENT

Timeline of African Independence

26 July 1847: Liberia

28 February 1922: Egypt

24 December 1951: Libya

1 January 1956: Sudan

2 March 1956: Morocco

20 March 1956: Tunisia

6 March 1957: Ghana

2 October 1958: Guinea

1 January 1960: Cameroon

27 April 1960: Togo

26 June 1960: Madagascar

30 June 1960: DR Congo

1 July 1960: Somalia

1 August 1960: Benin

3 August 1960: Niger

5 August 1960: Burkina Faso

7 August 1960: Côte d'Ivoire

11 August 1960: Chad

13 August 1960: Central African Republic

15 August 1960: Congo

17 August 1960: Gabon

20 August 1960: Senegal

22 September 1960: Mali

1 October 1960: Nigeria

28 November 1960: Mauritania

27 April 1961: Sierra Leone

31 May 1961: South Africa

1 July 1962: Rwanda

1 July 1962: Burundi

3 July 1962: Algeria

9 October 1962: Uganda

12 December 1963: Kenya

24 April 1964: Tanzani (Tanganyika 9 December 1961 - Zanzibar 10 December 1963)

6 July 1964: Malawi

24 October 1964: Zambia

18 February 1965: Gambia

30 September 1966: Botswana

4 October 1966: Lesotho

12 March 1968: Mauritius

6 September 1968: Swaziland

12 October 1968: Equatorial Guinea

20 September 1974: Guinea-Bissau

25 June 1975: Mozambique

5 July 1975: Cape Verde

6 July 1975: Comoros

12 July 1975: Sao Tome and Principe

11 November 1975: Angola

29 June 1976: Seychelles

27 June 1977: Djibouti

18 April 1980: Zimbabwe

21 March 1990: Namibia

24 May 1993: Eritrea

15 of 36

16 of 36

-----Cold War--------

1960 Sit Ins

SNCC

Lynching highpoint 1898

Plessy 1896

1964 COFO

Freedom Summer

Voter Registration

MFDP

1963 Kennedy shot

African anti-colonial movements

Student Nonviolent

Co-ordinating Committee

World War II

Gandhi

BOB MOSES

ELLA BAKER

DIANE NASH

WAZIR PEACOCK

--The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee developed out of two grassroots movements from 1959-1960—the Greensboro Sit-Ins and the Nashville Movement.

--The founding conference of SNCC at Shaw University in 1960 -- Ella Baker (long time NAACP and SCLC activist) invited the students to meet at her Alma Mater

SNCC played a central role in mobilizing to create the Mississippi Democratic Party in 1964.

--The SNCC concept of leadership differed significantly from that of CORE and SCLC. Ella Baker described it as “group-centered” in contrast to the “leader-centered group pattern of organization” of the more established groups. SNCC had no intention of creating Slocal chapters, as CORE did, nor offer support to already established organizations, as SCLC did. SNCC organizers focused on building grassroots leadership and indigenous organizations that would carry on the struggle after SNCC organizers moved on.

--SNCC recruited and trained leaders from the bottom of black society --- tenant farmers, sharecroppers, maids, and laborers. One of the most famous recruits during Freedom Summer was Fannie Lou Hamer

17 of 36

1961 - The First Two Freedom Rides

Nashville

Birmingham

Montgomery

Jackson

New Orleans

Washington, D.C.

The Freedom Rides brought the movement to the deep South. The first two buses that left Washington, D.C. were stopped by violence n Alabama (one outside of Anniston and one in Birmingham). The veteran students of the Nashville Movement believed that violence could not be allowed to win so decided to send a group of students and other volunteers to Birmingham to continue the rides to New Orleans. The Kennedy administration was opposed to the continuation of the rides -- the story along with pictures of the burning bus outside Anniston made it to the front pages of the world’s newspapers. Kennedy was about to meet with Khrushchev and the news from Alabama undermined JFK’s position that the U.S. stood for freedom against the dictatorship of the Kremlin. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy told John Seigenthaler to talk sense into the Nashville students, tell them that they were going to get killed if they continued the rides. Seigenthaler reported back to RFK that Diane Nash, the elected coordinator of the project, had refused his request to stop the rides. RFK was flabbergasted, “Who in the hell is Diane Nash?”

(see A Force More Powerful’s “We Were Warriors” about the Nashville Movement and PBS’s documentary on the Freedom Rides)

18 of 36

World War II

-----Cold War---------------

1960 Sit Ins

1955 Montgomery

bus boycott

King

1957 SCLC

SNCC

1910 NAACP

1942 CORE

1964 COFO

Freedom Summer

1908 Springfield IL

Race riots

Lynching

Gandhi

1961 Freedom Rides

NAACP local chapters in S.

est by black WW II vets

CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS

1957 1960 1964 1965

1946 Morgan v VA

1932 - ------------------------------------------------ Highlander

Citizenship schools

• Community centers

• Voter Registration

• Freedom Schools

1963 Kennedy shot

African/Asian anti-colonial movements

1960 Boynton v VA

1944 Smith v Allwright

Interaction

Among

Organizations

and

Leaders

Gandhi’s development of nonviolent tactics and strategy was studied by U.S. activists who returned to the U.S. Bayard Rustin advised King during the Montgomery Bus Boycott and James Lawson was asked by King to go to Nashville, Tennessee, to devise a nonviolent strategy to desegregate public facilities in Nashville. Lawson begain training black college students in nonviolent resistance, which eventually led to the Sit-Ins and boycotts.
The Sit-Ins led to the formation of SNCC. When the CORE Freedom Riders were stopped by violence in Alabama, the SNCC students went down to finish the rides (original destination New Orleans). SNCC Freedom Riders arrested in Mississippi, which led many to realize that Mississippi had to be taken on in a special way = Freedom Summer.
SNCC would not have been able to make much headway in Mississippi if local NAACP Mississippians hadn’t already been organized for years and could introduce SNCC field secretaries to the communities in which they wanted to organize. Both the NAACP and SNCC worked together to create the alternative political party during 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), to challenge the white-only Mississippi Democratic Party.
CORE used the NAACP 1960 victory in Boynton v Virginia (extended Morgan v Virginia to waiting facilities) as the reason for the Freedom Rides in 1961. CORE workers experienced the unique repression of the deep south and were radicalized by it. This led them to participate in Freedom Summer by establishing Community Centers
Myles Horton founded the Highlander Folk School in 1932. Bernice Robinson and Esau Jenkins attending Highlander and out of discussions there came the idea of a Citizenship School to teach literacy to blacks who wanted to register to vote. The first school was so successful that many copied it. SCLC provided structural support for the spread of these schools. The Freedom Schools of Mississippi were inspired by the success of the SCLC Citizenship Curriculum.

19 of 36

MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM SUMMER - 1964

20 of 36

?

The inside of a COFO Freedom Summer brochure. It establishes relationships among Freedom Schools, Voter Registration and Community Centers. For example, Freedom Schools supplemented the poor education students got in public schools; if everyone registered to vote there would be better public schools; and community centers made up for the poor education that adults had when students in public schools. Freedom Schools were part of the Freedom Summer strategy of creating an alternative political party to the MDP.

The left panel advertises that some of the schools will be boarding schools--that never happened. Freedom Schools were originally conceived for middle and high school students and community centers originally for adults. But what happened was that adults showed up for freedom schools and youngsters showed up at community centers.

21 of 36

22 of 36

Mississippi Literacy Test

c. 1955

23 of 36

24 of 36

FREEDOM VOTE

25 of 36

The creation of the

MFDP

26 of 36

MFDP

Location of Mississippi projects

DISTRICTS

State Convention in Jackson

68 Convention Delegates:

64 black
4 white

5 Congressional Candidates

2 Senate Candidates

Governor and Lt. Governor

27 of 36

Fannie Lou Hamer

(1917-1977)

Speaking at the Credentials Committee Hearing of the

National Democratic Presidential Nominating Convention

Atlantic City, New Jersey - August 22, 1964

28 of 36

Lyndon Johnson opposed the seating of the MFDP and spent political capital twisting arms.

The Credentials Committee offered a “compromise:” MFDP to get two seats “at large” without voting power. MDP delegates to be seated, had to swear a loyalty oath to the Democratic Party.

The MFDP voted against accepting the “compromise.”

The Convention Delegates, under the impression that the MFDP approved the “compromise,” approved the Credentials Committee recommendations.

29 of 36

The Success of Freedom Summer

[T]he most significant thing that the movement gave to us was it removed people from fear. The freedom from fear of being dragged out of your house in the middle of the night for daring to want to be part of the mainstream, of daring to dream or want to participate, to want to have equal justice, that equal pay for equal work that my father used to talk about. The generations since the movement have not been taught to stay in their place or to understand that there’s a certain way to walk and stand and look at and relate to white people. For white and blacks, I think that is the most significant contribution it made to people in [Mississippi].

-- L.C. Dorsey

30 of 36

What happened in 1964 symbolized the situation that we are in now. The National Democratic Party and the political leadership of that party at the time, said, okay, there’s room for these kind of people. And it was the professional people within our group who were asked to become part and did become part of the Democratic Party. On the other hand they said, there isn’t room for these people—grassroots people, the sharecroppers, the common workers, the day workers. There’s room for them as recipients of largesse—poverty programs and the like. There isn’t room for them as participants in power sharing.

--Bob Moses

The Failure of Freedom Summer

31 of 36

Never again were we lulled into believing that our task was exposing injustices so that the ‘good’ people of American could eliminate them. We left Atlantic City with the knowledge that the movement had turned into something else. After Atlantic City, our struggle was not for civil rights, but for liberation.

-- Cleveland Sellers

The Lesson of Freedom Summer

32 of 36

THE SOUTHERN FREEDOM MOVEMENT

1960 Sit Ins

1955 Montgomery

bus boycott

1965 Selma

1964 COFO Freedom Summer

1961 Freedom Rides

1954 Brown v Board

Leading to:

CIVIL RIGHTS ACTS

1957 1960 1964 1965

Freedom from Fear Freedom of Association

BUT NOT Freedom from POVERTY

or Freedom from DISCRIMINATION

33 of 36

Vincent Harding

From Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker (1981)

“. . . Because this country has been changed [by the Southern Freedom Movement], we must change too

if we are going to continue to carry on the struggle . . . . You move into a struggle with certain kinds of visions and ideas and hopes. You transform the situation and then you can no longer go on with the same kinds of visions . . . because you have created a new situation yourselves. And if anybody has taught us how to be flexible and change and recreate our ideas and our thoughts as time has gone on, Ella Baker has done that.”

34 of 36

Ella Baker speaking at the MFDP State Convention

“Until the killing of black men, black mother’s sons

Is as important as the killing of white men, white mother’s sons

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes”

Bernice Johnson Reagon -- Ella’s Song