Freedom Summer

It's a documentary about summer 1964 when hundreds of Northern students went to Mississippi to assist in voter registration of African Americans.

The two-hour documentary has essentially three parts. The initial segment learns about the students going to Mississippi to work on this project organized by Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Thus, African Americans ran the project even though most volunteers were white.

The second part of the documentary recounts the reaction of white Mississippians, including church bombings and the murder of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. It recounts the search for the bodies, the role of Rita Schwerner, Michael's wife, in pressing for federal government assistance in the search, and the reluctance of Lyndon Johnson to provide that assistance. We also learn of the Freedom Schools operated by the volunteers.

The film's last part tells of the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and its efforts to unseat the official Mississippi delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, where Lyndon Johnson was nominated to run against Barry Goldwater. Again we see Johnson's manipulation to keep the Freedom Democratic Party from being seated. Finally, we hear snippets of a remarkable speech to the credential committee by Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper who had been denied the vote in 1962 and became a Civil Rights leader.

This is a reminder of a stained American history that I am part of--I supported Barry Goldwater in that election.