Freedom Summer 1964: the volunteers and the Delta

Why did the movement invite outside volunteers?

After years of beatings and killings that drew little national notice, Mississippi organizers decided in late 1963 to bring hundreds of college students into the state for a summer. The Freedom Vote that fall, when Northern students had helped run a mock election, showed that outside volunteers drew press attention and federal concern. Bob Moses and other COFO leaders argued that the country would not ignore violence against the sons and daughters of influential families. Some SNCC staff worried that confident, well-educated newcomers would push aside local people. The project went ahead.

The broadside shown on this page, from the archives of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, advertised a campus talk by SNCC field secretary Charles Cobb to recruit volunteers.

Where were volunteers trained?

Two week-long orientation sessions were held at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, between June 14 and June 27, 1964. Volunteers learned how to canvass, how to react to arrest and assault, and what Mississippi law enforcement was likely to do. Movement veterans, including Fannie Lou Hamer, spoke to them and led singing. The SNCC Digital Gateway has a June 1964 photograph of Hamer and Chuck Neblett leading volunteers in song.

What happened to Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner?

On June 21, 1964, as the second group was still training, three civil rights workers disappeared in Neshoba County after being released from the jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney was a Black Mississippian from Meridian; Andrew Goodman, a volunteer from New York, had arrived only the day before; Michael Schwerner was a CORE staff member. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam on August 4. Members of the Ku Klux Klan, working with local law officers, had killed them. Rita Schwerner, Michael's widow, testified with Hamer before the Credentials Committee that August.

What did volunteers do in the Delta?

In Sunflower County and elsewhere, volunteers went door to door asking people to try to register and to join the Freedom Democratic Party, and they taught in Freedom Schools. Ruleville had a Freedom School that summer. Volunteers lived with local families, who took real risks by housing them; the Hamers were among the hosts. Across the state that summer, according to figures compiled from movement records, more than 1,000 people were arrested, dozens of churches were burned or bombed and dozens of homes and businesses were attacked.

What did Freedom Summer change?

It added few registered voters, since registrars kept turning people away, but it built the Freedom Democratic Party, brought national attention and helped lead to the Voting Rights Act. It also changed the volunteers, many of whom went on to the student, antiwar and women's movements. For Mississippians like Hamer, the summer brought new allies and also new tensions over race and leadership inside the movement. Our page on Freedom Schools covers the schools in more detail.