Freedom Summer Facts
Freedom Summer Facts
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Interesting Freedom Summer Facts: |
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Robert Moses, the Mississippi field director of SNCC, provide much of the early leadership and organizational effort for the Freedom Summer. |
More than 1,000 out-of-state volunteers came to Mississippi to participate in the Freedom Summer |
Most of the non-Mississippi were northern whites, many of whom were also Jewish. |
Since the state government was decidedly against the Freedom Summer and most white Mississippians were as well, or afraid to publicly side with the activists, the organizers usually operated out of black churches. |
Activists also established "Freedom Schools" during the Freedom Summer in black churches and in the homes of notable black citizens. |
Much of the anti-Freedom Summer legal efforts were funded by the White Citizens Councils, while the illegal and often violent anti-Freedom Summer activities being promoted by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. |
Scores of Freedom Summer activists were beaten, dozens of churches were bombed and burned, and four activists were murdered. |
The most famous case of anti-Freedom Summer violence was the murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney in Neshoba County. |
The abduction and murders of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney brought an FBI investigation into Mississippi and a heavy federal presences, which helped to alleviate much of the anti-activist violence. |
Other blacks were believed to have been murdered by the Klan during the Freedom Summer |
Despite often being opposed to the many civil rights activists, F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover supported Attorney General Robert Kennedy's decision to inundate Mississippi with F.B.I. agents. |
After the Freedom Summer, some civil rights groups, such as the SNCC, took a more militant tone. |
Due to actions during the Freedom Summer, namely the murders of the three activists, the F.B.I. took a more active role in prosecuting the Ku Klux Klan, even targeting it with the COINTELPRO program it used against the Black Panthers. |
The leader of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan at the time, Samuel Bowers, was convicted of an unrelated but civil rights era murder and died in prison for that crime in 2006. |
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