“Freedom Vote” in Mississippi Begins
The “Freedom Vote” on this day was a mock election in Mississippi involving officially unregistered African American voters. The event was organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to dramatize the fact that only 7 percent of the potentially eligible African-American voters were actually registered.
The Freedom Vote was considered a success by SNCC leaders, and it inspired the idea for a larger effort in the summer of 1964. This became Freedom Summer, in which about 1,000 white northern college students were recruited to help African-Americans register to vote.
Freedom Summer began on June 21, 1964; that night, three civil rights workers (James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner) were kidnapped and murdered by KKK members.
Read the December 1963 SNCC Executive Committee Minutes on the Freedom Vote and plans for Freedom Summer: http://www.crmvet.org/docs/6312_sncc_excom_min.pdf
Learn more: Iwan W. Morgan and Philip Davies, From Sit-ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s (2012)
Learn more: Gordon Martin, Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote (2010)
Learn more about the Southern Civil Rights Movement – Photos and Documents: http://crmvet.org/
Learn more at the SNCC Legacy Project at Duke University
And check out the work of the Andrew Goodman Foundation
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here