Full transcript
0:01The Civil Rights Act of 1964 encouraged
0:05young activists to get to work the
0:08following year testing the new law.
0:12The following year was called the
0:14Freedom Summer of 1964,
0:17led by Bob Moses, a SNICK worker who
0:19organized both black and white students
0:22from the South and the North to register
0:25voters in Mississippi.
0:27He had 700 volunteers. Many of them came
0:30from many of the the white volunteers
0:33from out of the south came from affluent
0:35families. And they get a lot of
0:37attention from the national press for
0:39tickling the shark's chin. I mean,
0:41everybody knows that the South isn't
0:44going to just give in even though
0:47there's a civil rights act in place. Uh,
0:50and so what Moses wants to do is to have
0:55people pay a lot of attention to the
0:57social conditions and the political
0:59rights for black Americans in the South.
1:02He wants to continue communicating that
1:05even though the law is in place, there's
1:08still a lot of work to do actually
1:10having the law make life fairer by
1:13giving more people the chance to
1:14influence politics in the south. Moses
1:18would form the Mississippi Freedom
1:20Democratic Party as an alternative to
1:23the racist Democratic Party of the state
1:25at that time.
1:27Workers would attract 800,000 new
1:30voters, all black, by the summer's end,
1:33who would register as Mississippi
1:34Freedom Democrats.
1:36He creates a state convention and sent
1:39delegates to the national democratic
1:41convention to challenge the Mississippi
1:43Democratic Party's control of all the
1:46electoral votes of that state. And
1:48essentially what Moses is doing is by
1:51all the all the rules, right? He
1:54collects 80,000 voters. He shows up and
1:57says, "We are significant part of the
2:00Democrats in Mississippi and the
2:03Democrats in power don't represent our
2:05needs because they're segregationists.
2:07So, we want a place at the table." And
2:11the Democrats at the National Convention
2:13denied him voting rights and a role on
2:16the floor. So ultimately, you know, the
2:20Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and
2:22the Freedom Summer 1964 was a success in
2:25some ways, right? It brought white kids
2:28and black kids together for a common
2:30cause that was just they registered a
2:32lot of voters. They ran freedom schools
2:35where they educated older black folks in
2:38civics and voter behavior and in
2:42literacy. So it did a lot of good, but
2:45at the same time also a lot of SNICK
2:48members came away disillusioned because
2:51they had done the things you're supposed
2:53to do in a democracy and the party they
2:56belong to, the Democratic Party, had
2:58denied them a voice.
3:01Also,
3:04that summer had cost lives. James
3:07Cheney, who is a black Mississippian,
3:09Michael Schwarner, Andrew Goodman, who
3:11were Jewish students from Cornell
3:14University, were all three killed
3:16outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi by
3:19the local clan in cahoots with local law
3:23enforcement.
3:25Not until 2004 would the Mississippi
3:27Attorney General actually open a case
3:30that found the people who killed the
3:32three men guilty. Uh, so it's not until
3:351994 that justice actually gets served
3:38for those murders.
3:40Another worker was killed in a car wreck
3:42that summer and another four people were
3:44critically wounded. A total of 80
3:47freedom summer workers were beaten.
3:491,062 people were arrested, volunteers
3:53and locals, and 37 churches were bombed
3:56or burned down. 30 black homes or
3:58businesses were bombed and burned down
3:59for being sympathetic to the cause. So
4:03yes, the freedom summer had some
4:05successes, but also it had it it it
4:09demonstrated the limits to what the
4:12civil rights law could do. And in fact,
4:15what begins happening is that a rift
4:19emerges in the movement where a lot of
4:23people like Bob Moses begin saying SNIK
4:26has to become an organization that works
4:30totally for black people under black
4:33leadership. We we can't work with white
4:36people to achieve the ends we want to
4:38achieve. we we won't be taken seriously
4:41to be assumed that our successes are
4:43happening only be because of white
4:45support and we need to build black
4:47support and black success
4:51long term there was a lot of success um
4:55a lot of these local activists from
4:57Mississippi became political figures on
4:59the state level there were a lot of the
5:00first black politicians in the state
5:03would sustain that activism for decades
5:05down the road and black voter
5:08registration would triplet between 1964
5:10and 1968.
5:12So in a lot of ways, this split, this
5:16rift that begins emerging between black
5:18activists and white activists, it's not
5:21good for the movement in the sense that
5:24it hurts the underlying assumption that
5:27civil rights is for everybody, but also
5:30it spurred more black people into action
5:33and increased voter behavior altogether.
5:36Also, the Freedom Summer led to the
5:39Voting Rights Act of 1965, the second
5:43law that Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed
5:45for as president. The Civil Rights Act
5:48of 1965 was important because it made
5:51tests or devices meant to keep anyone
5:53from voting illegal. So, pac, literacy
5:57tests, these sorts of things could no
5:59longer be used. And if they were used,
6:02the federal government could send in the
6:03attorney general to conduct elections
6:07and make sure they were have opening
6:09opening fairly. I mean, this law had
6:11immediate effect. And the very first
6:13year after it goes in on the books,
6:16there are 250,000 new black voters,
6:19right? Blacks would win seats in
6:21Georgia's legislature and city councils
6:23across the South began to actually
6:26reflect the people who they oversaw.
6:29rights would continue to be an ongoing
6:31and frustrating issue, but it would
6:34continue to be something people fought
6:36for.
6:38What was frustrating for a lot of
6:39Americans was violence in the California
6:44city of Watts in the Michigan city of
6:45Detroit in 1965.
6:48There, black activists sat in buildings
6:51and took them hostage, occupying them
6:55and burnt them down.
6:58So what a lot of people in these inner
7:01city neighborhoods said was that they
7:04didn't have the freedoms they deserved
7:06because
7:08their communities existed to make money
7:10for white people. That a lot of the
7:12businesses in their communities were
7:13white-owned. They weren't blackowned.
7:15That the schools their kids went to were
7:17run by white people, not black people.
7:19And that they wanted to take back their
7:21neighborhoods for themselves and they
7:23were willing to militarize to do that.
7:26This didn't make a lot of sense to a lot
7:29of middle-class white Americans who had
7:31just applauded the passage of two civil
7:33rights laws. You know what a lot of
7:35white Americans said was, you know, we
7:38just big air quotes around this. We just
7:40gave these people their rights and here
7:42they are protesting further and getting
7:45violent. The mid1 1960s at the end of
7:49the day didn't necessarily despite the
7:52passage of these laws that make up the
7:55second reconstruction didn't make a lot
7:57of Americans feel good about the civil
8:00rights successes of the last couple
8:02years.