Three men’s tragedy on a small scale and a whole race’s saving grace on a larger scale. The Freedom Summer of 1964 was a result of the deep underlying oppression against blacks in their most basic rights to vote and express political interests. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had been attempting to regain these rights for quite a long time but with little success due to limited publicity and support. Only 6.7% of black Mississippians were registered to vote around 1962, the lowest percent in the country, because of poll taxes, literacy tests, fear, and intimidation. This left the SNCC with little to work with along with the violence and discrimination thrown at them every day. Ultimately, the negatives were outweighing the positives. Thus, the SNCC banded together with the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), NAACP, and SCLC to form the Council of Federated Organizations in 1962, otherwise known as COFO. This organization, along with the help of public press and the empathy of others was the driving force behind Freedom Summer.
COFO organized a mock election, that occurred at the same time as the regular elections of November 1964. The goal was to show how blacks desired to take part in the electoral process and gain the SNCC national publicity to draw attention to the oppression black Mississippians faced. This mock election took place primarily to increase voter registration, but also to create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), set up Freedom Schools, and open community centers to help segregated blacks. With such a big list of goals that needed to be met, COFO needed all the help it could get and thus, invited and accepted about 1,000 out-of-state, mostly white, privileged college students from the North, to assist the voting registration. It was believed that inviting many Northern, white volunteers would “focus national attention on Mississippi as a means of forcing federal intervention in the state,” (McAdam, 39) and to result in favorable publicity among white Mississippians. The National Council of Churches organized one-week training sessions at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio to teach nonviolent self-defense and how to work courageously alongside SNCC field staff. This huge, nonviolent event by civil rights activists was deemed the Mississippi Summer Project, otherwise known as Freedom Summer.
Freedom Summer produced extremely successful results; more than 60,000 black Mississippian risked their lives to attend local meetings, choose candidates, and vote in the mock election. This was a surprisingly large push in the civil rights movement for the African American community. However, with great success comes great tragedy to counteract it. In the capital city of Jackson, the state’s senators and governor publicly refused to obey federal integration laws and the local police force was supplied with tear gas and shotguns in preparation for Freedom Summer. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan inflicted violence that included 29 shootings, 50 bombings, and over 400 (mostly false) arrests. The rest of Mississippi’s white population also wasn’t to kind to volunteers; constant abuse and harassment ensued from them, including arson, beatings, and many forms of cold-blooded murder.
There are three faces associated with Freedom Summer, that can’t be mistaken. These people died with good intentions but were seen as the opposite in other’s eyes. Local African American James Chaney, and white New Yorkers Michael (Mickey) Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, were the three young civil rights activists who became famous for their death. Upon arrival to Mississippi, the three immediately were told to set off to investigate Neshoba County’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church, a church recently bombed by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi. The team investigated and decided to go back to Meridian where they were stopped and unwelcomingly greeted by law enforcement that arrested them. Chaney, who had been driving the vehicle, was charged with speeding, and the other two were held for investigation. Cecil Price – Neshoba County sheriff’s deputy – escorted them to the the Philadelphia jail at around 4 pm on June 21, 1964. Price said the three men would have to wait in jail until the Justice of the Peace arrived to process the speeding fine. Price returned around 10 pm, collected the fine – without the Justice of the Peace – and told the three to get out of the county.
Their release from jail was the last time mostly anyone saw them alive before their kidnapping and murder. From what was gathered in court at a later date, after leaving Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the Philadelphia jail, Cecil Price contacted Edgar Ray Killen, one of the leaders of the local Ku Klux Klan. Killen directed Klan members to head in two cars for the outskirts of Philadelphia, and Price released the Civil Rights workers from jail and ordered them to head back to Meridian. He then joined the pursuit of the CORE station wagon.
The Klansmen eventually caught up to the three, kidnapped, and drove them to Rock Cut Road, where they murdered the three. The Klansmen loaded the bodies into the CORE vehicle and drove them to Old Jolly Farm, where they buried the bodies in the earthen dam.
The jury found seven defendants guilty, including Price. After many appeals, the men entered prison early in 1970. Each had received a decently long sentence but, in the end, none would serve more than six years behind bars.
Ultimately it wasn’t actually until August 4th that Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman’s decomposing bodies were discovered under the earthen dam six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney from several gunshot wounds and a savage beating.
The murders made headlines throughout the country, and provoked an outpouring of national support for the Civil Rights Movement. However, tension rose with the realization that the murders were only widespread news because two of the victims were white. If it had only been Chaney, the case not have been even spoken of today. Public outrage from around the country ignited the spark that pushed for more freedom amongst the black community. U.S. Congress soon passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Ultimately, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. Despite the murder of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, they had unknowingly died as the saving grace of the Mississippi Summer Project. Tactics previously used to prevent blacks from voting were now banned, more than 40 freedom schools were established, and over the course of the summer, about 80,000 African American’s signed up to join the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. By the end of 1966, more than half of African-Americans in southern states had registered to vote. In the years that followed, many were elected to local offices as well. Many of the volunteers, influenced by their work in Mississippi, went on to become leaders in the Black Power Movement and women’s movements of the 1960s as well as devoting their careers to legal or social services for the disadvantaged.