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Analysis Of Freedom Summer By Bruce Watson

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“Freedom Summer”, a book by Bruce Watson, talks about that historic time of 1964 in Mississippi. He explains in detail about the events that went on. Even the most painful details from that summer he has you relive as he tells about them. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee went to Mississippi to educate African Americans and help them vote. Watson talks about the murder of three innocent people while down there in Mississippi. Three people that were young and just helping African Americans be educated were murdered for helping. He uses many different quotes from those that were there or experienced what went on. All these to tell the story so important because it shaped American democracy. It made sure that African Americans had …show more content…

These college students had to see many things that they would rather forget. They only wanted to help but knew what would happen when they did get down to Mississippi. “Atrocities, including the lynching of more than five hundred Mississippi Negroes-more than any other state-were ennobled as righteous. Lynching went unpunished, murder was ‘self defense’...”(Watson 44). This depicted exactly what happened during this time and because of this many were lost when they came back from that summer. That summer changed their lives forever as they came back totally different. “Studying returned volunteers, psychiatrist Robert Coles saw signs of ‘battle fatigue… exhaustion, weariness, despair, frustration, and rage’”(Watson 265). Not only were they upset but they were changed as a person becoming more radically left and lost in college studies. The atrocities that went on during this time in Mississippi changed the volunteers for the rest of their lives. The college students tried to get enough voters to put African Americans into the governing house of congress. They educated voters and formed a party for those people in Mississippi. “The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party waited in the wings. The MFDP’s bold challenge at the Democratic National Convention was still seven weeks away. To unseat Mississippi’s all-white delegation, Freedom Democrats would need as many registration forms as possible for their parallel party”(Watson

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