Freedom Summer-- In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation. 86% of all non-white families lived below the nationalpoverty line. In addition, the state had a terrible record of black voting rights violations. Some counties did not have a single registered black voter. Whites insisted that blacks did not want to vote, but this was not true. Many blacks wanted to vote, but they worried, that they might lose their job. In 1962, over 260 blacks in Madison County overcame this fear and waited in line to register. 50 more came the next day. Only seven got in to take the test over the two days. Once theygot in, they had to take a test designed to prevent them from becoming registered.

The SNCC decided to send volunteers into Mississippi during the summer of 1964, a presidential election year, for a voter registration drive. It became known as Freedom Summer. 800 students gathered for a week-long orientation session at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, that June. They were mostly white and young, with an average age of 21. They were also from well-to-do families, as the volunteers had to bring $500 for bail as well as money for living expenses, medical bills, and transportation home. SNCC's James Forman told them to be prepared for death. "I may be killed. You may be killed. The whole staff may go." He also told them to go quietly to jail if arrested, because "Mississippi is not the place to start conducting constitutional law classes for the policemen, many of whom don't have a fifth-grade education."

On June 21, the day after the first 200 recruits left for Mississippi from Ohio, three workers, including one volunteer,disappeared. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney had been taken to jail for speeding charges but werelater released. What happened next is not known. Local police were called when the men failed to perform a required check-in with Freedom Summer headquarters, but Sheriff Lawrence Rainey was convinced the men were hiding to gain publicity. The FBI did not get involved for a full day. During the search for the missing workers, the FBI uncovered the bodies of three lynched blacks who had been missing for some time. The black community noted wryly that these murders received nowhere near the same nationwide media attention as the murders of the three workers, two of whom were white.

Meanwhile, Freedom Summer went on. The volunteers helped provide basic services to blacks in the South. "Freedom clinics" provided health care; Northern lawyers worked in legal clinics to secure basic constitutional rights; "freedom schools," though illegal, taught blacks of all ages traditional subjects as well as black history.

One of Freedom Summer's most important projects was the estbalishment of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white regular Democratic party in the state. This project actually started before Freedom Summer did, when MFDP won crucial support from the California Democratic Council, a liberal subsection of the state's Democratic party, and Joseph Rauh, head of the DC Democratic Party, vice president of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and general counsel to the United Auto Workers. President Johnson, however, backed the regular Democratic party because he could not afford to lose their political support.

In June, the names of four MFDP candidates were on the Democratic primary ballot as delegates to be sent to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, but all four lost. Later that month, the regular Democratic party adopted a platform that explicitly rejected the national party platform in the area of civil rights. This put President Johnson in a difficult position. The national Democratic organization required all delegates to make a pledge of party loyalty, but Johnson had to allow the Mississippi Democrats to be seated because otherwise delegates from five other states would walk out.

On August 4, the bodies of the three civil rights workers were found in a dam on a farm near Philadelphia, Mississippi. They had all been shot and the one black, James Chaney, had been brutally beaten. The discovery shifted media attention back to Mississippi just 18 days before the start of the Democratic National Convention. Two days later, the MFDP held a convention and selected a 68-person delegation, which included four whites, to go to the national convention. By now, the party had the support of ADA, delegates from nine states, and 25 congressmen.

In the end, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, like the Freedom Riders, did not fully accomplish its goals. The MFDP,however, was far from a failure. It showed blacks that they could have political power. It ensured that, in the words of Joe Rauh of ADA, "there will never be a lily-white [delegation] again." It raised the important issue of voting rights, reminding America that the recently-passed Civil Rights Act, which is appointed black leaders because it did not address the right to vote, was not enough. It also helped blacks and other minorities gain more representation in the Democratic party. Freedom Summer, too, was an overall success.

There is no denying the effect that Freedom Summer had on Mississippi's blacks. In 1964, 6.7% of Mississippi's voting-age blacks were registered to vote, 16.3% below the national average. By 1969, that number had leaped to 66.5%, 5.5% above the national average.