Bruce Watson. Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy. New York: Viking Pres, 2010. Bruce Watson, the author of Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy, wrote accurately about the historical events that happened in corrupt Mississippi in the summer of 1964. This historical summer was a summer of staggering, and terrifying experiences for the young adults of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, also known as SNCC (pronounced ‘snick’). These students would challenge every power in Mississippi to achieve equality, as had African Americans in other southern states. Before Freedom Summer Rosa Parks had already refused to sit in the back of the bus boycotting separate but equal. Which led to the Montgomery bus boycott, leading to integration in Montgomery, Alabama. Dogs and fire hoses attacked protestors led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Birmingham, Alabama during the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, while trying to raise awareness to integration of African Americans. Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech had been delivered in August of 1963. All these protest, demonstrations, …show more content…
speeches and out cries for equality had already taken place, what else did African Americans need to do to obtain equality? In the summer of 1964 the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee created Freedom Summer also known as Mississippi Summer Project.
The SNCC’s goal was to confront every power of Mississippi. They trained volunteers they had selected by a rigorous application process to help African Americans to vote, and to help educate the colored in Mississippi. These young-adult college students, around 700, would spend their summer living in Mississippi with the poverty struck African American families. These young volunteer college students didn’t realize that before their jobs could even be started three of them would disappear, buildings would be burned, and non-violent would become violent. Mississippi wouldn’t need the sun to keep it hot this
summer. Throughout Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America Democracy, by Bruce Watson you always feel as if you are in the scene of his many depicted stories. His individual interviews with volunteers, SNCC staff, newspaper publisher(s), Mississippi native(s), and Freedom School student(s) involved with Freedom Summer gives him the ability to intensely describe their encounters, and allows the reader to visually be present. Not only does this allow Watson to vividly describe the stories told by his participants, it also tells the reader that the information given is credible. Along with personal interviews, the book gives bibliography of archives, magazines and journals, film and video, e-mail interviews, and web sites. Bruce Watson shows through his story telling just exactly what the rest of America had to do to create equality for African Americans in Mississippi that summer in 1964. After Freedom Summer media paid closer attention to the deaths of African Americans, the Civil Rights movements continued, Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, by 1990 Mississippi had more elected black officials than any other state, and eventually the United States of America would have an African American President. This inspirational story of the brave Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee staff and volunteers is heart braking and informative of a historical event that should never be forgotten.
The forties and fifties in the United States was a period dominated by racial segregation and racism. The declaration of independence clearly stated, “All men are created equal,” which should be the fundamental belief of every citizen. America is the land of equal opportunity for every citizen to succeed and prosper through determination, hard-work and initiative. However, black citizens soon found lack of truth in these statements. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 rapidly captured national headlines of civil rights movement. In the book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, the author, Anne Moody describes her experiences, her thoughts, and the movements that formed her life. The events she went through prepared her to fight for the civil right.
Here, though, the focus is primarily on the Committee’s voter registration initiative starting in 1964. This documentary provides a more historical perspective, and offers glimpses into the strategies used in Selma, Alabama to obtain social change. It shows how those within the group questioned the effectiveness of the protests and the march, and
The book, “My Soul Is Rested” by Howell Raines is a remarkable history of the civil rights movement. It details the story of sacrifice and audacity that led to the changes needed. The book described many immeasurable moments of the leaders that drove the civil rights movement. This book is a wonderful compilation of first-hand accounts of the struggles to desegregate the American South from 1955 through 1968. In the civil rights movement, there are the leaders and followers who became astonishing in the face of chaos and violence. The people who struggled for the movement are as follows: Hosea Williams, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and others; both black and white people, who contributed in demonstrations for freedom rides, voter drives, and
Over the course of five chapters, the author uses a number of sources, both primary and secondary, to show how the National Negro Congress employed numerous political strategies, and allying itself with multiple organizations and groups across the country to implement a nationwide grassroots effort for taking down Jim Crow laws. Even though the National Negro Congress was unsuccessful in ending Jim Crow, it was this movement that would aide in eventually leading to its end years later.
Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Print.
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi and Eyes on the Prize characterize life for African-Americans during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s as full of tension, fear, and violence. Eyes on the Prize is a documentary series that details major figures and events of the movement, while Anne Moody gives a deeply personal autobiographical account of her own experiences as an African American growing up in deeply segregated and racist Mississippi and as a civil rights activist during and after college. These two accounts are very different in their style yet contain countless connections in their events and reflect many ongoing struggles of the movement. These sources provide an excellent basis for discussion of nonviolence versus violence
What exactly was the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi? It was a time during the 1960s that had affected people even up to this day, and had also initiated the formations of documentaries and cinematic material that were created to renovate events. It was a time when the privilege and opportunity of drinking from a publicly-used water fountain depended on your race and color of skin. A not so recent film, Mississippi Burning, was produced in order to show detailed happenings that occurred during this time period. The movie talks about many characters that actually existed throughout history. It was shocking to experience the way people were treated in Mississippi. People were murdered for racist reasons, organizations were created to pursue horrible deeds, and people that were looked up upon were a part of these organizations. This film reenacts certain situations and was talked about frequently when it was first released. Reviews stated that the movie was somewhat historically accurate. However there were also those who explained that the film was superficial in a way that abused what really did happen during that time. Mississippi Burning was historically factual in introducing characters who were actually alive during this time. However it failed to realistically demonstrate how actual quarrels took place, and included unnecessary, dramatic events for entertainment and economic reasons.
“It was like a Nazi rally. Yes, it was just that way Nuremberg must have felt.” (Lambert, 114) The Nazi rally was referred to the public address Governer Ross Barnett gave at half time during the football game between Ole Miss and the University of Kentucky. Nazi’s as well had rallies lead by Hitler. They had a notion that Jews were an inferior race, based on the idea of Eugenics. The Nazi’s and the South were alike in that aspect. The South saw African Americans as an inferior race and the only race that could be superior was the white race. In, The battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights v. State Rights, the author Frank Lambert presents historian James Silver’s idea that Mississippi was a “closed society,” therefore diminishing any other views besides their own. Before one could consider Mississippi as a “closed society,” one must look at the history of what created Mississippi to become a “closed society,” to have strong beliefs of white supremacy and why they tried to sustain those beliefs at all cost. In this novel, Lambert address the issue that made a significant impact on Mississippi and its people. The issue of James Meridith, an African American who sought for high education from a prestigious school, Ole Miss. White Mississippians beliefs of white supremacy towards African Americans extreme. What caused Mississippi to become this society dates back to the civil war, the fear on African Americans surpassing them, and the politics.
When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person in 1955 she was arrested. When the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in 1956, King was highly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and also Bayard Rustin who was a activist. Martin Luther King Jr’s role was the SCLC president and has his position he traveled around the world giving lectures on non-violent protest and civil rights. King Jr would meet with religious figures, activist and political leaders. One family who Martin Luther King Jr met had describe him as “the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change.” (MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. 2017). King Jr and his family moved back to Atlanta in 1960 where he joined his father as co-pastor. In 1964 King Jr held and organised the March on Washington for jobs and freedom and was attended by 200,000-300,000 participants. The march was widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of the American civil rights.The walk finished in King's most renowned address, known as the "I Have a Dream" discourse, an energetic call for peace and uniformity that many consider a perfect work of art of talk. Remaining on the means of the Lincoln Memorial a landmark to the president who a century sooner had cut down the foundation of servitude in the United
The Black Panther Party’s initial success came about without having to address these roots, but, as the Party expanded and wished to move ahead, the Party’s shifts in policy can be directly attributed to the wishes and needs of the community. Murch profiles the Oakland Community School and the People’s Free Food Program, which were social institutions created by the Black Panther Party to address the needs of the community; though these approaches were used to bring about more members and to garner support, these tactics worked because of their correlation to the needs of Oakland’s African American community.
In the summer of 1964, SNCC organized the Mississippi Summer Project, which was an urgent call to action for students in Mississippi to challenge and overcome the white racism of their state. The Mississippi Summer Project had three goals: registering voters, operating Freedom Schools, and organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) precincts. SNCC organized Freedom Days where they gathered black people together to collectively try to register to vote and Freedom Schools where they taught children, many of who couldn't yet read or write, to stand up and demand their freedom.
This excerpt is taken from a 17 minute speech by Medgar Evers on May 20, 1963, in response to the vocal criticisms of Mayor Allen Thompson’s view of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as being ‘outside agitators’. This historic broadcast, in which Mississippians for the first time were presented a black perspective on segregation and civil rights, has never been located. Nonetheless, recordings of irate reactions by Mississippians slurred with racist epithets, “What are you people of Mississippi going to do? Just stand by and let the nigger take over. They better get his black ass off or I am gonna come up there and take it off” (Pinkston, 2013), have been found preserved at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
The Civil Rights Movement had a remarkable success during the summer of 1964. During 1964, committees such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) recruited members to work in the efforts of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi to what became known as Freedom Summer. The project was meant to be a nonviolent effort to integrate Mississippi’s political system but was faced with violence. college students traveled to Mississippi to help register black. The predominantly white students established "freedom schools" to educate black school children, and organized voter registration drives throughout the state. The student volunteers, most importantly, helped to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). However, it was a Mississippi native, Amzie Moore that brought the SNCC into Mississippi. Moore met New York native, Robert Moses during the Freedom Summer of 1964. When Moses arrived in Mississippi, he saw that there was a lack of student organizations in the state and discussed the possibilities of it with Moore. Moore’s dedication to the movement inspired Moses to put the idea of voter registration into the SNCC’s agenda (Carson). Although the movement had great support, it also had even greater opposition. For instance, the Citizens Councils which was founded in Indianola, Mississippi during the 1950’s. The council was a
"The Ku Klux Klan in Reconstruction North Carolina: Methods of Madness in the Struggle for Southern
Nearly all of the problems the Black Panther Party attacked are the direct descendants of the system which enslaved Blacks for hundreds of years. Although they were given freedom roughly one hundred years before the arrival of the Party, Blacks remain victims of White racism in much the same way. They are still the target of White violence, regulated to indecent housing, remain highly uneducated and hold the lowest position of the economic ladder. The continuance of these problems has had a nearly catastrophic effect on Blacks and Black families. Brown remembers that she “had heard of Black men-men who were loving fathers and caring husbands and strong protectors.. but had not known any” until she was grown (105). The problems which disproportionatly affect Blacks were combatted by the Party in ways the White system had not. The Party “organized rallies around police brutality against Blacks, made speeches and circulated leaflets about every social and political issue affecting Black and poor people, locally, nationally, and internationally, organized support among Whites, opened a free clinic, started a busing-to prisons program which provided transport and expenses to Black families” (181). The Party’s goals were to strengthen Black communities through organization and education.