Freedom Summer Thesis

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Freedom Summer, otherwise known as the Mississippi Summer Project, occurred during one of the most tumultuous times in the Deep South. Despite the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, which granted blacks equal citizenship and voting rights, African Americans were still plagued by violent discrimination and disenfranchisement almost over a century later. During the 1960’s in the Deep South, African Americans struggled to have their voices heard over the white slander and oppression. Freedom Summer volunteers offered Mississippi African Americans an increase in political opportunity, but not without a price. Violence and fear filled those few sweltering summer months as southern whites tried to deter blacks from voting. Because of all the terror …show more content…
If someone says he cares about people, how can he not be concerned about this?” (Watson 83). Instead of doing internships or having summer jobs, volunteers committed their summer to making a difference in Mississippi. They saw helping blacks register to vote would inevitably affect their social and political life by giving them the chance to be an equal American citizen. They believed they were the generation that was able to benefit a race that had been oppressed for so many centuries. Some volunteers had more of a personal connection like Fred Winn. Only a year earlier, he realized that he had a black stepsibling. Winn stated, “ Now it wasn’t just about these ‘Negroes’ or ‘coloreds’ or whatever everyone is calling them, but people to whom I’m related” (Watson 109). Despite the constant fear they faced, nearly all volunteers stayed to help make a difference in the Magnolia …show more content…
Since J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, believed the civil rights movement involved Communists, he did not like to get involved. It was not until over eighteen hours later that the FBI came to Mississippi to investigate the disappearances of the three volunteers. SNCC also lacked support from poor whites. The Freedom Democratic Party was to represent all oppressed classes, but poor whites only saw them as the “nigger party.” Even journalists and doctors who secretly supported the Freedom Summer cause would not allow their name to be printed out of fear that they would be discriminated against. Volunteers also faced a heat and mosquito problem that they had never experienced before living in the North. The sweltering weather and the bugs were a metaphor for the harsh emotional and psychological conditions they
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