Gallery 6 - I Question America

Volunteers performed a variety of functions. They did clerical work in project offices. They canvassed Black communities and worked on voter registration. They wrote press releases, answered phones, created leaflets, fliers, and picket signs. They taught children in Freedom Schools and adults in literacy/citizenship classes. They organized demonstrations, attended mass meetings, and lined up with Black Mississippians. Many volunteers lived with Black families and formed lasting friendships. Host families fed and housed volunteers.

James Chaney was given a private funeral in Meridian on August 7, 1964. Several of his peers were slated to speak at the service, including Mississippi Project Coordinator for CORE, Dave Dennis. Dennis had a speech prepared but after seeing James Chaney’s brother, Benjamin so upset, he could not bring himself to give a standard eulogy. Instead, he challenged the people in the pews to work harder, to persevere. In the passionate speech, Dennis said what he knew many felt: "I’m tired of funerals. I’m tired of it! We’ve got to stand up!"

Freedom Summer came to a dramatic climax in Atlantic City. In August at the Democratic Party’s national convention, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) challenge the seating of White delegates from Mississippi’s Democratic Party. The MFDP argued that party regulars had systematically excluded Black voters in their elections. In response, the MFDP had organized their own state convention, open to all races, and elected their own delegates. Party regulars from Mississippi and other Southern states threatened to bolt if the MFDP were seated.

Shut out of the all-White state Democratic Party, Movement activists formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) on March 15, 1964, aiming to challenge the state party at the national convention. To send 68 national delegates to Atlantic City, members first needed to elect representatives at the precinct, county, district, and state levels. Local activists struggled to recruit potential delegates and pull together meetings. Rural Black Mississippians remained wary of registering, even for the MFDP.

On March 29, 1956, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Mississippi legislature created a new state agency, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, to "do and perform any and all acts deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi and her sister states." From 1956 to 1973, the commission promoted segregation in Mississippi and investigated its perceived enemies, mainly those associated with the Civil Rights Movement.

Meridian native James Chaney began working for COFO before Freedom Summer began. Chaney worked closely with Michael and Rita Schwerner to establish COFO’s presence in the city, focusing on voter registration. Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman left early from volunteer training in Ohio to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Neshoba County. They were reported missing, and an investigation was underway for several weeks until an FBI informant led agents to the bodies in a newly constructed dam on August 4, 1964.

Movement organizers set up makeshift offices in houses, churches, and empty storefronts. They ran off meeting fliers and voter registration applications on borrowed mimeograph machines. They used toll-free WATS lines to communicate between offices and track field staff. The collaboration of older people, full-time civil rights organizers, and youths began to raise hopes. New tactics like citizenship classes, cooperatives, and pray-ins allowed for more Mississippians to be part of the movement as it began to mature.

In 1963, Mississippi State University defied segregationists by playing Loyola University in the NCAA basketball tournament. Coach Babe McCarthy’s Bulldogs qualified by winning their fourth SEC title. In previous years—1959, 1961, and 1962— they had not competed because the tournament included integrated teams. MSU president Dean W. Colvard supported the team. MSU students burned an effigy of Governor Ross Barnett for his opposition. State Senator Billy Mitts got a court injunction to keep them from playing, but the team left the state before it could be served.

The perceived failure of Citizens’ Council to ensure White supremacy led to the rise of more violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi and the historic March on Washington fueled increased cross-burnings and night-rider activities. Extreme reactionary groups such as the Mississippi White Knights of the Klan and Americans for Preservation of the White Race grew in size as they pursued a campaign of violence and intimidation toward Movement activists and sympathizers.

On June 9, 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer, June Johnson, Annelle Ponder, Euvester Simpson, Rosemary Freeman, James West, and others were riding the bus home to Greenwood, returning from a Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) citizenship school workshop. At the Winona bus depot, a few activitsts tried to integrate Stayley’s Cafe. They were arrested along with others in the group. At the Winona jail, police and coerced Black inmates took them out of their cells one by one and savagely beat them.