Commemorating the 44th Anniversary of Freedom Summer

COMMEMORATING THE 44TH ANNIVERSARY OF FREEDOM SUMMER-- (House of Representatives - June 23, 2008)

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Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Madam Speaker, I rise today to support the commemoration of the 44th Anniversary of the death of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi while working in the name of American democracy to register voters and secure civil rights during the summer of 1964, which would become known as Freedom Summer. I would like to thank my fellow Judiciary member and the gentleman from Georgia, Congressman John Lewis for introducing this legislation.

The right to vote has held a central place in the black freedom struggle. After emancipation, African Americans sought the ballot as a means to in American society. During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states to try to end the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although blacks had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the Fifteenth Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right. White local and state officials systematically kept blacks from voting through formal methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings.

Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in the South that had started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because of the State's particularly dismal voting-rights record: in 1962 only 6.7 percent of African Americans in the State were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which was led by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers' homes were frequent targets; 37 black churches and 30 black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned during that summer, and the cases often went unsolved. More than 1000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers.

But the summer's most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers--a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white coworkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. On June 21, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner set out to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia, Mississippi, but were arrested that afternoon and held for several hours on alleged traffic violations. Their release from jail was the last time they were seen alive before their badly decomposed bodies were discovered under a nearby dam six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney from a savage beating. These savage attacks were perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan.

The FBI investigation that uncovered the deaths of these three brave young men, white and black, also led to the discovery of the bodies of several other African-Americans from Mississippi, whose disappearances over the years had not attracted much attention.

On December 4, 1964, 21 White Mississippians from Philadelphia, Mississippi, including the sheriff and his deputy, were arrested and charged with conspiring to deprive Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner of their civil rights, because murder was not a Federal crime. Ironically, on the very same day, December 4, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Later, a District Court judge dismissed the charges against the 21 Whites. After three years, and an appeal to the Supreme Court, seven individuals were found guilty, but 2 of the defendants, including Edgar Ray Killen, who had been implicated by witnesses, were acquitted because the jury was deadlocked on charges.

Over twenty years later, on June 21, 2005 after new evidence, a jury convicted Edgar Ray Killen on 3 counts of manslaughter. These freedom riders made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of all people, black and white. It is fitting that we recognize them and pay tribute, respect, and homage to them, and to the legacy that they have left behind.

We commemorate and acknowledge the legacy of these brave Americans who participated in the civil rights movement and the role they played in changing the hearts and minds of Americans. We also celebrate these Americans for their decision to create a political environment necessary to pass legislation to expand civil rights and voting rights for all Americans.

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