The Freedom Summer and the Changing South

Image of young black woman preparing to use her right to vote as a citizen for the first time. Image retrieved from the University of Illinois

Nearly everything that is taught in American Schools today about the South deals with slavery and the racism of the Southern people. School children first learn about the great plantations set up in Virginia and the Carolinas and the subsequent switch of labor from white indentured servants to black slaves. Students learn of the "triangle trade routes" as well as the cruel conditions which the slaves suffered at the hands of their masters. History courses then spend a great deal of time emphasizing the role of the Civil War in freeing the slaves from the injustice and servitude, however few teachers make is clear how much worse the lives of African Americans living in the South was after the Civil War. It is my belief that the freedom of Southern African Americans did not begin with the end of slavery, but rather at the moment when they embraced their right to vote.

Once the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued and enforced in the South, freed slaves found themselves now working the same plots of land under the same conditions as before the war; the only differnece is they were now called sharecroppers. For the next hundred years African Americans living in the South continued to suffer under Jim Crow laws and were prevented from living as equals among the Southern whites and even from asserting their rights as Citizens. This all began to change however in the mid 1950's with the American Civil Rights Movement (click here for a time-line).

One of the pinnacles of the Civil Rights Movement occurred in the summer of 1964 with a movement called "The Freedom Summer." During June and July of this year thousands of civil rights workers and supporters went to Mississippi under the direction of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to motive and help African Americans to vote. Mississippi had been a state known for its strict enforcement of the Jim Crow laws and a very small percentage of African American's had traditionally voted in elections. Without political representation, the African Americans had no control over their governments and therefore the improvement of their own lives.

Due to the efforts of the Civil Rights organizations and volunteers, African Americans in the South were able to take control of one of the greatest blessing they had as citizens of this country, their vote. In Mississippi, the voting percentages of African Americans before 1964 were only about 5%, however, as soon as 1967 they were well over 50% and estimated even as high as 67%. Since the time of the Freedom Summer and the other events of the Civil Rights movement, African American's have established themselves as a powerful voting block in the South and have been able to elect their own leaders into office and begin to improve their conditions in the South. To me, the Freedom Summer seems like a monumental moment in Southern History as it was the definitive event which began to empower Southern African Americans to embrace their right to vote.

--Parker






Image retrieved from the University of Illinois


Information about the Freedom Summer obtained from
1) http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/courses/ci407ss/freedomsummer.html
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Summer