Freedom Summer Research Paper

A group of people risked their life to obtain equality for African Americans in the south. The Freedom Riders were a group of around 13 people. Most of them were African Americans but there were always a few white skinned people in the group as well. There was no set leader for the Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into the Southern United States. The south was referred to as the most segregated part of the U.S. The main goal of the Freedom Riders was to desegregate and become “separate but equal.” They had also set out to defy the Jim Crow Laws. The Freedom Riders had a little bit of help from two court cases: Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia. These court cases ruled that it was

Freedom Riders exposed the many ways of Southern resistance by the numerous acts of violence committed towards them. Violence was experienced not from civilians, police officers and a mass of Ku Klux Klan members (KKK). The Freedom riders faced bus bombings, being beaten, and near lynching. The Freedom Riders decided to unmask what was happening in the south to showcase the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia in 1946 and Boynton v. Virginia in 1960, which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. "The Riders' dangerous passage through the bus terminals and jails of the Jim Crow South represented only one part of an extended journey for justice that stretched back to the dawn of American history and beyond" (Arsenault 10). The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the Freedom Rides, but some were also organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides consisted of dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters, conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities, beginning in 1960.The Supreme Court's decision in Boynton supported the right of interstate travelers to disregard local segregation ordinances. Southern local and state police considered the actions of the Freedom Riders to be

Following, on May 4, 1961, a mixed group of 13 African Americans and white civil rights activist led the Freedom Rides (Freedom Rides?). Similar, to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides traveled to various cities in the south to protest against segregation of the bus terminals. History.com staff concurs “the Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips through the American South to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals.” The purpose of the freedom riders was to openly disobey the Jim Crow laws in the south in a nonviolent fashion. This was a dangerous journey, many of these people were beaten, arrested, and even the buses were destroyed. Yet, they persevered (“Freedom Riders: The Nashville Connection”). History.com staff, adds “The Freedom Riders, were recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a U.S. civil rights group, they departed from Washington D.C., and attempted to integrate facilities at bus terminals along the way in the Deep South.” African Americans would try to use the “whites only” bathrooms and counters, which attracted attention and violence (Freedom Rides). According to the history.com staff due to the efforts of the Freedom Rides, “in September 1961, the interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in bus and train nationwide.” The

Freedom Summer was a nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system during 1964. It raised the consciousness of millions of people to the troubles of African-Americans and the need for change. Americans all around the country were shocked by the killing of civil rights workers and the brutality they witnessed on their televisions. For nearly a century, segregation had prevented most African-Americans in Mississippi from voting or holding public office. Segregated housing, schools, workplaces, and public accommodations denied black Mississippians access to political or economic power.

African Americans were taught to be “second class citizens” compared to white people, bowing to white men and having to be respectful to all the unlawful rules of segregation. The Klu Klux Klan was never causing the mayhem in Mississippi; an organization called the Citizens’ Council was the group generating the strife against the black community. The Citizens’ Council was running the state because it involved many political leaders, those in charge of voting registration, the police force, and mass amounts of citizens. Efforts were made by bold African Americans to increase the number of black voters in Mississippi, but people were too afraid to challenge the white community and those that did try to register to vote were simply denied. Many times, the poor black community did not receive food during the wintertime as a punishment for “defying the white man” by trying to register to vote; this was the last straw. In the summer of 1964, the campaign called Freedom Summer, or also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, was launched in order to bring awareness to the hateful and backwards setting of

In order to talk about the Freedom Summer project, we first have to identify it’s roots and the history behind it. Before the Freedom Summer project, there was the civil right movement in which thousands of African Americans protested for equality. Equality didn’t mean the term referred in the court case Plessy vs Ferguson “separate but equal.” African Americans wanted to end the era of segregation, this include not having to use lower quality public facilities than whites, not having to give their seats in a bus if a white person wanted to sit there, and the right to vote. With the help of different civil right activist such as Bayard Rustin, Jo Ann Robinson, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and all the people that marched and protested against

Although ruled unconstitutional, segregation continued in the Deep South while the government ignored it. The Freedom Rides then set out to challenge these states who ignored the ruling of segregated public buses and continued to enforce the Jim Crow laws. The Freedom Rides rode buses with mixed racial groups into the states. Often white mobs awaited their arrival to beat them down. The people on the bus never responded with violence and took massive beatings. The local police often knew about these mobbing’s, but ceased to do anything about it. Freedom Rides continued to send buses down despite getting beat up and killed. The more often this occurred the more national attention it got. This showed everyone how these states were disregarding

Occurring before the time of the KKK’s start of their attacks were the Freedom Rides looking for racial equality on the transportation services. Raymond Arsenault discusses in his book Freedom Riders 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice that the Freedom Rides began after the blacks were forced to give up their bus seat, so that whites could sit, Irene Morgan first experienced this when she was forced by the driver to remove herself from the seat in 1944 (14). Arsenault finds that the rides made their way all of the south of the United States going from Florida to Northern Virginia toward the west in Illinois and through Missouri and heading as west as Texas and California (220-221). John A. Kirk writes in his article “Battle Cry of Freedom: Little Rock, Arkansas and The Freedom Riders at Fifty” that the riders were surged on by the Congress of Racial Equality(CORE). The riders route was planned to ride from St, Louis, Little Rock, Shreveport, and finally stopping in New Orleans. They would later leave New Orleans headed

Hundreds of people marched Wednesday in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "Freedom Day". The January 22, 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights activists staged a demonstration outside the courthouse Forrest County, in defense of the right to vote for blacks. The demonstration marked the beginning of a historic year for Mississippi. A few months later, civil rights organizations launched the "Freedom Summer" campaign in which more than a thousand volunteers from different states traveled to Mississippi to help with voter registration and mount what is called "Schools freedom". From this initiative the Democratic Freedom Party, who challenged the hegemony of the Democratic Party made all-white Mississippi,

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

The Freedom Riders were a group of civil rights activists who wanted to test the law of segregation for public transportation. The group of riders were interracial, male and female, and consisted of students, leaders, and organizations who wanted to fight for civil rights. In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled segregation in interstate travel as unconstitutional, therefore these activists set out to test this law. Throughout 1961, the Freedom Riders rode buses into the deep southern states, which happened to be the most segregated. They wanted to see how the townspeople would react, by accepted or declining the new law. The results were terrifying and brutal, white mobs would chase the riders out, beating them, and forcing them to fear for their lives. The riders were ignored, after all the beatings, threats, and arrests, they still never backed down. They stood up for each other and their rights, which lead to their victory of desegregating transportation along with other public facilities, schools, and restaurants. These strong men and women define bravery, they have made a glorifying impact on society and have allowed equal rights to expand beyond belief, although nothing will ever change the struggles these riders went through.

Freedom Summer helped to mobilize African-Americans to vote. Freedom summer was a campaign to register African-American voters in Mississippi and to establish freedom schools and community centers that occurred during the summer of 1964. The campaign was announced by CORE, SNCC, and the Council of Federal Organization (COFO). First they recruited college students, fundraised and got the word out about the campaign. The campaign had a large amount of college students not only in Mississippi but also students from other colleges who traveled to Mississippi to help with the campaign. When some citizens, press and elected officials found out about the campaign they were infuriated and determined to stop it with violence and fear. There were

The Freedom Riders strive through a journey of hardships to have their point accepted by others, which was bus desegregation. Through the journey the Freedom Rides took some obstacles that affected them physically and mentally. They fought threw times like the downfalls that their movement brought and the mobs that greeted them in every state. The mobs were verbally and physically violent towards the Freedom Riders more than a few times while their movement went on.

“Freedom Riders” were a group of people, both black and white, who were civil rights activists from the North who “meant to demonstrate that segregated travel on interstate buses, even though banned by an I.C.C. Ruling, were still being enforced throughout much of the South” (The South 16). The Riders attempted to prove this by having a dozen or so white and black Freedom Riders board buses in the North and travel through Southern cities. This was all “a coldly calculated attempt to speed up integration by goading the South, forcing the Southern extremists to explode their tempers” ('Freedom Riders' 20). The author of the Newsweek article stated this as the Southern opinion of the reason for the Freedom Riders. The

Starting in the late 1800s through the 1960s voting exclusions were sanctioned through literacy tests which segregated poll locations throughout the Country (African American History Timeline, 2009). US Civil Rights Commissioner Dean Griswold of Ohio stated during the 1962 Hearings of the Bills Relating to Literacy Tests and Voter Requirements, that "State officials did [do] use literacy tests as a means of discrimination on grounds of race and color" (Literacy Tests and Voter Requirements in Federal And State Elections Hearing, 1962, p. 144). However, out of the many states affecting African Americans through voting prohibitions, none of them negatively affected Blacks as much as Mississippi. According to the Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage "only 6.7% of Blacks in [Mississippi] were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country" (McMickle, 2002). In response to this alarming percentage, advocates for civil rights grouped together to form a campaign in Mississippi focused on teaching literacy, the political structure in the US, and other academic subjects (Emery, et al., “The Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum”). The project, which was launched during the summer of 1964, was known as the "Freedom Summer". This initiative is so significant in discussing educational reformations in the Black community because it was a community led