Don't come to Mississippi this summer to save the Mississippi Negro. Only come if you understand, really understand, that his freedom and yours are one. ... Maybe we're not going to get many people registered this summer. Maybe, even, we're not going to get very many people into Freedom Schools. Maybe all we're going to do is live through this summer. In Mississippi, that will be so much!
-- Bob Moses, COFO Project Director
The Mississippi Summer Project launched in June 1964 as an attempt to register as many Black voters as possible in the state of Mississippi. At the aid of the population of Black people in these rural counties, dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers were set up to educate, encourage and register disenfranchised Black citizens. It was a summer of community building, organizing and protest that established voter registration drives, voluntary summer schools, and the short-lived Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
WHY?
In 1960, almost 60% of Southern Blacks lived in urban areas…
But, in Mississippi, almost 70% of Black people still lived in mostly isolated, rural areas of the state...
Black people made up 42% of the state’s population but by 1963, there were less than 7% eligible Black voters registered to vote…
There were 21 questions on the literacy test Black people had to pass in order to register to vote and 285 sections of the Mississippi constitution that applicants could be asked to interpret in order to successfully register...
HOW?
4 organizations (COFO, SNCC, CORE, SCLC)...
2 week-long volunteer orientations held in Oxford, Ohio…
10 Weeks spent working in Mississippi…
More than 100 volunteer doctors, nurses, psychologists, medical students and other medical professionals providing emergency health care, teaching health education and advocating against Mississippi’s segregated health policies…
over 1000 out-of-state volunteers teaching, organizing and registering voters...
RESULTS
30 Freedom Schools established...
17,000 attempted Black registrants...
1,600 Black Mississippians Registered...
1,062 Volunteers/Activists arrested and beaten...
30 Black homes and businesses bombed or burned...
37 churches bombed or burned...
4 civil rights workers killed...
