Tuesday, July 5, 2016

How did the nonviolent efforts of the Freedom Summer contribute to the growing militancy of the civil rights movement by drawing sharper lines between those of the younger, more militant faction of the black freedom struggle and King’s goal of nonviolent resistance? Use three points to support your argument.

The focus of Freedom Summer, the 1964 civil rights activist project, was on voter registration and grassroots organizing in the South, concentrating on Mississippi. Two of the sponsoring organizations were the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
One SNCC member active in Mississippi was Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), a black man born in Trinidad and raised in New York. Carmichael was a vocal advocate of a more aggressive (although still nonviolent) approach and criticized the pace of reform achieved by King and his followers. When three CORE activists went missing, Carmichael participated in the search for them. After they were found murdered, he highlighted this incident in his call for faster change. He is credited with popularizing the phrase “black power” from 1966 onward.
Although the primary emphasis of Freedom Summer was on voter registration, only a few hundred African Americans were actually able to register that summer. The project had better success in subsequent years. Other initiatives, such as the establishment of Freedom Schools, were more immediately successful and had widespread repercussions. The need for education was a motivating factor in the establishment of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. In tandem with the focus on youth and education, the need for self-defense was constantly raised within the civil rights movement, as violent attacks against black activists assumed near-epidemic proportions that summer.
Numerous SNCC members who were active that summer continued their efforts outside of Mississippi and for years afterward. The reform of the nomination process for presidential candidates and electors was a primary focus that summer as well, leading to the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The push to include black delegates at the Democratic National Convention was largely an initiative of the younger members, including the brilliant orator Fanny Lou Hammer. SNCC member John Lewis entered the formal political process and was elected to Congress.
http://crdl.usg.edu/events/freedom_summer/?Welcome

https://snccdigital.org/events/freedom-summer/

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