The Freedom Summer: When Students Rose Up and Changed the World

Today in 2024, we find ourselves at the 60-year anniversary of some of the most influential few months of the Civil Rights Movement – Freedom Summer, 1964. The campaign involved hundreds of volunteers, almost all of them young people.

What was it?

In the run-up to 1964’s presidential election, Freedom Summer was a peaceful effort by civil rights activists, primarily young people, to register Mississippi’s Black residents to vote and help them learn about history/politics in Freedom Schools. It was primarily led by SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). The movement was met by a lot of violence, but the efforts ultimately helped to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It marks one of the final major interracial civil rights efforts of the 1960s.

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These posts chronicle the history of Freedom Summer.