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Fighting For Equality:
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| In 1964, COFO launched a cause called Freedom Summer to bring alertness to the voting aspersions. Thousnads of college students-mostly white -were brought to Mississippi to register voters and teach in Freedom Schools. The black voters had endured years of limitations,and the barriers to voting remained.
On the first day of Freedom Summer, three workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, were kidnapped, killed, and their bodies buried deep in an earthern dam. By the end of the summer, 37 black churches had been burned, 30 homes bombed, 80 civil rights workers beaten, and more than 1,000 black people arrested. The ruthless retort to Freedom Summer brought national reflection to racism in Mississippi and determined support for voting rights statute. |
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