The year 1964 produced a watershed in American race relations. In one of the civil rights movement's most dramatic initiatives, thousands of Northern white college students were recruited to come south that summer in an effort to "break" Mississippi and secure voting rights for its black citizens. Nicolaus Mills traces the history of this Summer Project, including its origins and aftermath, and shows in detail how its consequences involved not only great victories but also violence (the murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, among other events) and disillusion. His persuasive argument is that the noble quest for racial solidarity turned bitter and divisive in practice, climaxed by the Democratic party's rejection of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats at the 1964 national convention. In the rush of black anger that followed, the gains of the summer were forgotten and Black Power was born—and blacks went their separate way in trying to achieve equality in America. Relations between whites and blacks took a crucial turning which continues powerfully to influence our politics and social well-being today.
Part 1 Acknowledgements 9 Part 2 Introduction: Like a Holy Crusade 15 Part 3 Burn Jim Crow to the Ground 27 Part 4 Tremor in the Iceberg 42 Part 5 Nobody's Cannon Fodder 66 Part 6 Open the Eyes of the Nation 77 Part 7 There May Be More Deaths 94 Part 8 The Magnolia Jungle 105 Part 9 Pinto Beans and Politics 120 Part 10 No Two Seats 139 Part 11 Loose Ends 165 Part 12 Mississippi Revisited 184 Part 13 A Note on Sources 194 Part 14 Notes 196 Part 15 Index 217
Overview
The year 1964 produced a watershed in American race relations. In one of the civil rights movement's most dramatic initiatives, thousands of Northern white college students were recruited to come south that summer in an effort to "break" Mississippi and secure voting rights for its black citizens. Nicolaus Mills traces the history of this Summer Project, including its origins and aftermath, and shows in detail how its consequences involved not only great victories but also violence (the murders of Michael ...