Gallery 6 - I Question America

Barred from the general election, in September 1963 COFO began organizing a mock election as an educational tool to give Black people the opportunity to go through the voting process and to demonstrate to Mississippi and the federal government that Black people wanted to vote. Campaign manager Bob Moses described it as an important step to “legitimize” the Movement. The Freedom Ballot campaign began with a statewide convention in Jackson on October 6. Aaron Henry ran as candidate for governor, and Rev.

Attacks against Black people became indiscriminate as news coverage faded. Mississippi’s public officials and law enforcement saw Freedom Summer as an “invasion” of outside agitators and communists. The Klan followed suit. Night riders bombed Black churches, homes, and businesses. Activists were kidnapped, flogged, and beaten. During the two-month period of the Summer Project, Mississippi experienced more Klan violence than at any time since Reconstruction.

With little time and a goal of 200,000 votes, COFO staff raced to produce campaign materials, schedule rallies, arrange for polling sites, and print ballots. Despite ongoing harassment by Whites, Aaron Henry and Rev. Ed King campaigned around the state for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. To assist the campaign, Allard Lowenstein raised funds from Northern donors and recruited student volunteers from Yale and Stanford. The decision to invite White students was passionately debated. Some staff thought it might threaten the sense of empowerment felt by local people.

Poplarville native Mack Charles Parker was arrested on February 23, 1959, after being accused of raping June Walters, a pregnant White woman. Two days later, a White mob clad in masks and hoods kidnapped him from his jail cell. Parker was then beaten, driven to Louisiana, and shot to death. Ten days after the lynching, Parker’s body was found in the Pearl River in Louisiana. Some members of the mob admitted their participation, and the FBI did an extensive investigation. While two grand juries were convened, no arrests or indictments were ever made in the case.

COFO staff found office space and living quarters at Freedom Houses in Gulfport, Clarksdale, Greenwood, Canton, Jackson, and elsewhere. Located in Black neighborhoods and business districts, Freedom Houses were either rented or donated, often by local middle class Black people with financial independence from Whites. On shoestring budgets, volunteers set up makeshift offices to run fliers and voter registration applications.

Freedom Summer volunteers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman left together to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Neshoba County. The men were arrested and reportedly released, but never returned to the COFO office. They were reported missing, and federal officials initiated a search of the area to find them. Their bodies were found in a newly constructed dam on August 4, 1964, but the man who ordered their murder wouldn’t be brought to justice for over four decades more.

Michael Schwerner and his wife Rita joined CORE in January 1964, moving to Mississippi from New York. Bob Moses assigned him to work in Meridian where he quickly became a target of the KKK. Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were murdered and buried at Old Jolly Farm in Neshoba County. Schwerner described Mississippi as "the decisive battleground for America. Nowhere in the world is the idea of White supremacy more firmly entrenched, or more cancerous, than in Mississippi." The murders went without a conviction until 2005.

During his time at Queens College, Andrew Goodman joined the Council of Federated Organizations (CORE) and planned to join Freedom Summer. While at volunteer training in Ohio, Michael Schwerner recruited him to help investigate the burning of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Neshoba County. He and the two other men were arrested on their way back to the Meridian COFO office and were murdered soon after. In his eulogy, Rabbi Joseph Lelyveld remarked, "The tragedy of Andrew Goodman cannot be separated from the tragedy of mankind.

In 1961, Allen witnessed the murder of Herbert Lee and was coerced into saying that the murder was in self-defense. After he recanted his story and told the FBI the true events of that night, Allen was a constant target for White violence and retaliation. On January 31, 1964, Louis Allen was murdered in Liberty. Allen planned to move to Wisconsin the next day for his own safety. After he was murdered, the local sheriff stated that "if Louis had just kept shut his mouth, he wouldn’t be layin’ there on the ground."