Freedom Summer, Legislation, and Key/Actors and Groups 1.2

Mississippi

Mississippi

state known for racial violence, had an active and widespread kkk, economic intimidation

• Where the Freedom Summer began (SNCC)

Council of Federated Organizations (COF)

formed to coordinate NAACP, SCLC, CORE, SNCC, and National Urban League (NUL) to administer and carry out newly funded voter education (VEP)

Freedom Summer

COFO leaders decided to flood missisippi with volunteers to change the status quo of voter intimidation and economic discrimination

meant to combine voter ed., registration, political action

Freedom schools

created to teach literacy and civics to adults and kids (meant to be totally integrates)

• some volunteers white students

Beloved community ideal

love and commitment to nonviolence, wanted to eradicated discrimination, poverty, hunger, and homelessness

Accomplishments of freedom summer

• 41 freedom schools accomplished

• 3,000 youth attended

• taught to pass literacy tests (although few did due to discrimination)

• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDM) formed to challenge the all white Mississippi democratic party

Civil Rights Act of 1964

• encompasses voting rights, public accommodations, employment, and authorized higher courts to review district referrals to state courts

Voting Rights Act of 1965

• SCLC started voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama

• outlawed literacy tests, directed U Dep. of Justice to challenge poll taxes and gave attorney general the power to assign federal examiners to observe and direct voter reg. where less than ½ of eligible residents voted

Bloody Sunday

• march from Selma to Montgomery

• police responded with tear gas, billy clubs, and whips

• led to nationalized attention

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• minister who helped form SCLC

• wrote Letter from a Birmingham jail — called for all to stand up to immoral treatment of blacks

• I have a dream speech

• non violence for integration

Malcom X

• joined Nation of Islam

• wanted Africans to be self sufficient (education)

• wanted the creation of a black national state

• militarist

Lyndon B Johnson

• advocated for “great society”

• originally didn’t do much about racism but quickly began to take action

National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP)

• purpose: secure all people the rights guaranteed in the constitution

• focused mainly on legal battles

• also had a youth league

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

• born out of Montgomery bus boycotts

• mlk helped to create

• grassroots

• trained leaders in nonviolence

• also helped with voter reg.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

• grassroots org. established durring college student lunch counter sit-in

• primary focus on voter reg.

• helped organize freedom rides

Nation of Islam

• founded to prepare and educate African Americans for the struggle to take back the earth

• founded private schools

• militaristic

• civic action not apart of group

• separatism