Freedom Summer

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Freedom Summer
Part of the Civil Rights Movement
SNCC advert for the Freedom Summer
Date	June – August 1964
Location	Mississippi
Caused by	In 1962, only 5.3% of African Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote Formation of Council of Federated Organizations (COFO)
Resulted in	Creation of Freedom Schools Formation of Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Catalyst to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Parties
Local residents Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Lawyer's Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC) Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCR) Governor of Mississippi United States Senator Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Lead figures
Local residents Fannie Lou Hamer Amzie Moore Victoria Gray Adams Lawrence Guyot CORE member George Raymond Jr. SNCC members Bob Moses Hollis Watkins Unita Blackwell SCLC members James Bevel NAACP member Aaron Henry State of Mississippi Paul B. Johnson Jr., governor Congressman James Eastland, senator MSSC member Rex Armistead Klan member Samuel Bowers

Freedom Summer, also known as Mississippi Freedom Summer (sometimes referred to as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project), was a campaign launched by American civil rights activists in June 1964 to register as many African-American voters as possible in the state of Mississippi.

Blacks in the state had been largely prevented from voting since the turn of the 20th century due to barriers to voter registration and other Jim Crow laws that had been enacted throughout the American South. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers such as libraries, in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local Black population.

The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and SCLC). Most of the impetus, leadership, and financing for the Summer Project came from SNCC. Bob Moses, SNCC field secretary and co-director of COFO, directed the summer project.^[1]