School Beat: Book Review—Lessons From Freedom SummerLisa Schiffbyline‚ Oct. 30‚ 2008The modern Civil Rights movement, that period of action during the 1950s and 1960s to expose and eradicate the infringement of basic civil and human rights of African Americans, has proven to be one of the most significant events in the history of the United States. This work, unprecedented in scope, substance and style, involved sustained efforts to organize, protest, lobby, take legal action and educate. Many organizations and many people gave themselves to this work, transforming our nation by pushing us into the process of dealing with the legacies of slavery, a process in which we are still engaged and which will remain part of our future for some years to come. One of the many important moments in the Civil Rights movement was a period called “Freedom Summer,” that took place in 1964. After years of working in the South towards the desegregation of public facilities and registering African Americans to vote, civil rights organizers planned a volunteer-infused summer of direct action, voter registration and community education in Mississippi. Freedom Summer would be a head-on challenge to the many barriers in place in the South used to prevent African-American residents from registering to vote. Tactics such as poll taxes, complicated applications, and impromptu oral tests on state constitutions were the official mechanisms for denying the vote, and then there were the unofficial means of physical intimidation, including beatings, arrests, house burnings and murder. |