Existing comment:
1964 Civil Rights at 50
Freedom Summer:
It was called Freedom Summer, a campaign organized by civil rights groups to send hundreds of young people into the heart of Mississippi to register black voters.
Students from the North poured into the state to campaign for change. They helped thousands of black citizens apply to vote and set up Freedom Schools to teach more than 2,000 children.
But segregationists fought to crush them. Volunteers were arrested and beaten. Black churches and homes were bombed and burned. Three young civil rights workers who disappeared on the first day of Freedom Summer were found dead 44 days later, brutally murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
The summer of activism sped final passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act and galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed a vote for every American.
Photojournalist Ted Polumbaum covered Freedom Summer for Time magazine. The Polumbaum photographs featured in this exhibit are part of the Newseum's permanent collection. |