Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

http://nd.essortment.com/fannielouhamer_rgrh.htm

Who is Fannie Lou Hamer? Fannie Lou Hamer was born on October 6, 1917 in Montgomery County, Mississippi. Her parents were sharecroppers and farmed land on a plantation. Fannie was the last child of twenty children, six girls and fourteen boys. She contracted polio as a child and because there no vaccine for polio at the time, she was left with a limp. Although she was short and had a limp, her mother always told her to "stand up no matter what the odds." At the age of six, she began picking cotton to help the family. She said, "By the time I was thirteen I was picking two and three hundred pounds." Fannie only attended school after the harvest, which wasn't for very long, she said, "My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school [for black children] didn't last but four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear. I dropped out of school and cut cornstalks to help the family." She dropped out of school after the sixth grade. Even though she did not obtain a formal education, she became a dynamic speaker and civil rights worker.

In 1944, Fannie married Perry "Pap" Hamer. They moved to the Marlow plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi and became sharecroppers. Fannie Hamer worked as a timekeeper on the plantation. Hamer was always concerned about the bad working conditions in the fields. She wanted to make changes, but at the time had no avenue for doing so. During the 1960's Fannie became interested in the civil rights movement. She became involved in voter registration when members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) came to Mississippi. She remarked, "One day in early August, I heard that some young people had come to town teaching people how to register to vote. I have always wanted to do something to help myself and my race, but I did not know how to go about it. So, I went to one of the meetings in Ruleville. That night, I was showed how to fill out a form for registration. The next day, August 31, 1962, I went to Indianola, Mississippi to fill out a form at the registrar's office. I took the test." During this time, African-Americans were deterred from voting in the South. When Hamer and others from her city went to register to vote, they were asked to interpret the state's constitution. So, naturally, being unable to do so, Hamer flunked and was not allowed to register to vote. On the return trip home, the bus in which she and the others were riding was stopped for being "the wrong color." She and the others were jailed and later released. This sort of harassment was a typical experience for blacks in the South. When she returned home, Marlow, her landowner gave her an ultimatum, either stop trying to vote or leave his property. Hamer chose to leave the property and her family. Her husband remained on the property to continue working. Hamer stayed with various friends and neighbors. At each house in which she was staying, night riders caused violence. In 1963, after her third attempt, Hamer passed the test and became a registered voter. In order to assist other African-Americans in registering to vote, Hamer became a field secretary for SNCC and traveled across the South. On June 9, 1963, during one of the trips to South Carolina, the bus in which she and other SNCC workers was riding was stopped in Winona, Mississippi. When some of the workers went into the "white only" waiting room, the whole group was arrested. While in custody, Hamer and other workers were beaten unmercifully. Hamer suffered extreme injuries, which bothered her throughout the rest of her life. She said of the incident: "Three white men came into my room. One was a state highway policeman…They said they were going to make me wish I was dead. They made me lay down on my face and they ordered two Negro prisoners to beat me with a blackjack. That was unbearable. The first prisoner beat me until he was exhausted, then the second Negro began to beat me….They beat me until I was hard, 'til I couldn't bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That's how I got this blood clot in my eye--the sight's nearly gone now. My kidney was injured from the blows they gave me on the back." SNCC lawyers bailed her and the others out and filed suit against the Winona police. All the whites who were charged were found not guilty. This injustice made Hamer more determined to fight for equal rights in Mississippi. She is famous for the words she said when she awoke in the mornings, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." 1964 was an election year. Unable to attend a local precinct meeting of the Democratic Party, SNCC formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). At the Democratic national convention in Atlantic City, Fannie Hamer and other delegates challenged the Party for not addressing the concerne of the blacks of Mississippi. Hamer spoke to the Credentials Committee during the convention about the injustices of the all-white Democratic delegation. In part of the speech she asked, "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we are threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings?" A compromise was made in which two seats would be given to the MFDP. The Democratic Party promised never to have an all-white delegation again. In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights act, empowering federal registrars to register African American votes in the South. Hamer continued to work to better conditions in Mississippi by organizing grass-roots antipoverty projects. She became a sought after national speaker and worked to unite the black and white factions of the Mississippi Democratic party. In 1965, "Mississippi" magazine named her one of six "Women of Influence" in the state. In 1968, she helped create a food cooperative, to help the poor obtain more meat in their diet. In 1969, she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in which 5,000 people were able to grow their own food and own 680 acres of land. In 1972, she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus. During the last ten years of her life, she worked on issues such as school desegregation, child day-care, and low-income housing. Fannie Lou Hamer died on March 15, 1977. Many civil rights leaders and workers attended her funeral. One of the many who spoke at the funeral was Andrew Young, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, he said, "Women were the spine of our movement. It was women going door-to-door, speaking with their neighbors, meeting in voter-registration classes together, organizing through their churches, that gave the vital momentum and energy to the movement. Mrs. Hamer was special but she was also representative…She shook the foundations of this nation."

Title: Who is Fannie Lou Hamer?

Description:Profile of Fannie Lou Hamer, oranizer of the Mississippi Freedom Party and party delegate, field secretary for SCNN and grass-roots organizer.

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http://www.greatwomen.org/profile.php?id=72

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 - 1977)

Quick Facts

Birth: 1917

Death: 1977

Year Inducted: 1993

Achievement In:

Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper, changed a nation's perspective on democracy. Hamer became involved in the civil rights movement when she volunteered to attempt to register to vote in 1962. By then 45 years old and a mother, Hamer lost her job and continually risked her life because of her civil rights activism. Despite this and a brutal beating, Hamer spoke frequently to raise money for the movement, and helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to challenge white domination of the Democratic Party. In 1964, the MDFP challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic Convention, and in l968, the Convention seated an integrated challenge delegation from Mississippi. Deeply committed to improving life for poor minorities in her state, Hamer, working with the National Council of Negro Women and others, helped organize food cooperatives and other services. She continued political activities as well, helping to convene the National Women's Political Caucus in the 1970s. She is buried in her home town of Ruleville, Mississippi, where her tombstone reads, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Copyright©1998 National Women's Hall of Fame, All rights reserved.

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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhamer.htm

Fannie Lou Hamer, the youngest of twenty children, was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi, on 6th October, 1936. A sharecropper, Hamer did not know that African Americans could vote until she attended a a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meeting at a church in Ruleville. When Hamer attempted to register to vote, she was arrested and jailed. The next day her landlord told her that if she did not withdraw her request to vote, she would be forced off her land. Hamer responded by becoming an active member of the SNCC. After losing her work on the plantation, Hamer was employed as a field secretary of the SNCC and in 1963 she was instrumental in establishing the Delta Ministry, an extensive community development program. During the Freedom Summer campaign she helped form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Hamer became a national figure when at the Democratic Party national convention she made a passionate speech challenging the seating of the regular all-white Mississippi delegation. In 1968 Hamer founded the Freedom Farms Corporation (FFC) a non-profit venture designed to help poor farming families. It also provided social services and grants for education. Fannie Lou Hamer died in Mound Bayou, Mississippi on 14th March 1977.

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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfreedomS.htm

In 1964 the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) organised its Freedom Summer campaign. Directed by Robert Moses , its main objective was to try an end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers from the three organizations decided to concentrate its efforts in Mississippi. In 1962 only 6.7 per cent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. This involved the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP). Over 80,000 people joined the party and 68 delegates, led by Fannie Lou Hamer, attended the Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City and challenged the attendance of the all-white Mississippi representation. CORE , SNCC and NAACP also established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement . During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start . Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three men, James Chaney , Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner , were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on 21st June, 1964. This attempt to frighten others from joining the campaign failed and by late 1964 over 70,000 students had taken part in Freedom Summer. The following year, President Lyndon Baines Johnson attempted to persuade Congress to pass his Voting Rights Act . This proposed legislation removed the right of states to impose restrictions on who could vote in elections. Johnson explained how: "Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes." Although opposed by politicians from the Deep South, the Voting Rights Act was passed by large majorities in the House of Representatives (333 to 48) and the Senate (77 to 19). The legislation empowered the national government to register those whom the states refused to put on the voting list.

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http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/hamer.html

SNCC Project Group

Fannie Lou Hamer, known as the lady who was "sick and tired of being sick and tired," was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves. Her family were sharecroppers - a position not that different from slavery. Hamer had 19 brothers and sisters. She was the youngest of the children.

In 1962, when Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC volunteers came to town and held a voter registration meeting. She was surprised to learn that African-Americans actually had a constitutional right to vote. When the SNCC members asked for volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer was the first to raise her hand. This was a dangerous decision. She later reflected, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."

When Hamer and others went to the courthouse, they were jailed and beaten by the police. Hamer's courageous act got her thrown off the plantation where she was a sharecropper. She also began to receive constant death threats and was even shot at. Still, Hamer would not be discouraged. She became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote.

Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). In 1964, the MDFP challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Hamer spoke in front of the Credentials Committee in a televised proceeding that reached millions of viewers. She told the committee how African-Americans in many states across the country were prevented from voting through illegal tests, taxes and intimidation. As a result of her speech, two delegates of the MFDP were given speaking rights at the convention and the other members were seated as honorable guests.

Hamer was an inspirational figure to many involved in the struggle for civil rights. She died on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59.

http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/mfdp.html

The Freedom Ballot set the stage for the Mississippi Summer Project, organized primarily by Bob Moses. SNCC worked hard in the winter and spring of 1963-64 preparing for the project, which was an urgent call to action for students in Mississippi to challenge and overcome the white racism in the state of Mississippi.

In the prospectus circulated to college campuses that summer, the mission was stated: "...As the winds of change grow stronger, the threatened political elite of Mississippi becomes more intransigent and fanatical…Negro efforts to win the right to vote cannot succeed…without a nationwide mobilization of support. A program is planned for this summer which will involve the massive participation of Americans dedicated to the elimination of racial oppression…"

The Mississippi Summer Project had three goals: registering voters, operating Freedom Schools, and organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) precincts. One strategy of the project was to hold Freedom Days every two or three weeks. On Freedom Day, SNCC gathered black people together to collectively try to register to vote. However, SNCC faced the challenge of overcoming intimidation by whites, as several people had been killed on Freedom Days across the state.

The Freedom Schools helped the Freedom Days succeed. These schools taught children, many of who couldn't yet read or write, to stand up and demand their freedom. The children returned home and told their parents about the Freedom Days and convinced them to register for freedom.

Attempts to get people to attend MFPD meetings also suffered from intimidation by whites. Three men associated with the Freedom Democratic Party disappeared that summer. They turned up dead with fatal gunshot wounds--one with blows that crushed many of his bones. When asked by the media if she thought something positive would come from the triple assassination, Rita Schwerner, a member of CORE working out of Washington, said, "That is up to the people of the United States."

SNCC's reacted to the deaths with a renewed sense of dedication. Their goal was to take the MFPD to the Democratic National convention that summer in Atlantic City, to the "elected representatives of the United States." SNCC wanted the MFPD to represent Mississippi rather than the state's current delegation.

The MFPD had worked long and hard to prove that they were morally and politically entitled to the seats, but the Democratic Party was not convinced. They offered a compromise of two non-voting seats next to the regular Mississippi delegates. After much deliberation that involved Martin Luther King's support of the compromise, SNCC refused the Democratic Party's offer. SNCC and the MFPD were there to gain voting seats and since that could not be accomplished, they left the convention defeated but proud.

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http://www.frontpagemag.com/dh/2000/dh08-21-00.htm

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz082200.asp

DAVID HOROWITZ

Right On!

Back to the Future End of the Line for the “New Democrats”

Jewish World Review August 22, 2000 / 21 Menachem-Av, 5760

The Democratic delegates are also far wealthier than most of the people (57% had incomes over $75,000) and far more of them are members of unions (31%). They are also more African American (by 80%) and more Native American (by 30%) than the general population (LA Times 8/14/2000), and who knows how much more or less Armenian, Russian, Arab, Jewish, Polish, or take your pick of any non-politically correct category, since our leftwing media can’t be bothered to ask about such “over-represented” groups.

This ethnic distortion is explained by the fact that the political mentality of the Democratic Party is now so rooted in the discredited past that it has a rigid racial and gender quota system for delegates. How rigid? A black female delegate from Mississippi was denied a seat because the quota for women had already been exceeded. As if to underscore the unseemly irony of liberals’ 180 degree about-face on civil rights since the 1960s, the woman in question had been one of the original Mississippi Freedom Party delegates who, in a legendary moment of the civil rights struggle, were denied seats at the 1964 Democratic convention simply because they were black.

The Democratic Party is now a party of the last century (or perhaps even the previous one) -- a party of racial quotas, and racial preferences, of class warfare and impossible socialist dreams. As Jesse Jackson said, on the second convention night, it’s not just about race or gender; it’s about “redistributionism.”

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http://www.theamericanenterprise.org/hotflash0802.htm

August 2, 2000

THE "DIVERSIFIED" GOP Racial politics at the convention.

Some years back in Washington, DC, at an otherwise unremarkable conference where most panelists laid themselves prostate before the Gods of diversity, Harvard Law School professor Randy Kennedy dissented. But his critique was remarkably innovative. Instead of citing the importance of individual merit and other concepts which elicit sneers from the left, Kennedy beat the liberals at their own game.

Kennedy said the emphasis on a presidential cabinet or workforce that "looks like America" is profoundly misguided. Normally, of course, harping on "looks" is considered shallow and unfair. I would add that both are cardinal liberal sins. The PC crowd rails against "lookism" and even demands laws against discrimination based on appearance. But, as Kennedy shrewdly observed, the "diversity" obsession places looks above most other values. Sadly, it seems that in many respects the GOP now does also.

The New York Times, which usually gushes over diversity schemes, was remarkably, albeit justifiably, skeptical about the GOP’s own transparent effort in Philadelphia yesterday. "The 37th Republican convention opened when Erik Weihenmayer, a blind mountain climber, led the delegates in th e Pledge of Allegiance. Throughout the day, a parade of women, blacks, Latinos and recovered Democrats marched to the rostrum in a show that more resembled an Up With People jamboree than a hard-driving, calculated effort to retake the White House," wrote New York Times reporter Richard Berke. "Despite the understated references to the current administration, the words ‘Clinton,’ ‘abortion’ and ‘impeachment’ appeared to have been banished from the scripts today. Even Newt Gingrich was far removed from the action; his role tonight was as a commentator for Fox News. "

With the man who helped the GOP regain Congress now stashed away with all the other talking heads, the showcased speaker was Colin Powell. A man of genuine accomplishment on the battle field and elsewhere, Powell is renowned for his steely Horatio Alger life story and seemingly exemplary family life. Never mind the content of his character. Powell was on stage to remind folks just how inclusive the GOP really is.

Here was the GOP’s new face. Great, if you only care about looks. But he sounded and acted like an unrepentant liberal. His call for special GOP "outreach" efforts to minorities-as if standard GOP values of low taxes and less government won’t resonate with them just like everyone else-quickly degenerated into self-flagellation. "Some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped [thousands of ] black kids get an education." But "hardly a whimper is heard from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests."

Actually, affirmative action doesn’t help anyone "get an education" that they might otherwise be denied. It determines which particular school the beneficiaries of racial preference policies shall be educated. Even most liberals don’t suggest that "affirmative action" alone helps anyone attend college. Instead, they suggest persons of color are locked out of particularly prestigious schools because of biased standardized tests and other tools of the white male power structure. And whatever you make of GOP tax policy or the notion that the GOP convention should provide a platform for the kind of "class warfare arguments," favored by Democrats, Powell typecast the GOP rather unfairly. Many conservatives, after all, rail against "corporate welfare" and other boondoggles for big business.

Despite a hearty serving of "diversity" and liberal cliches, the media beast was largely unsatisfied. Many reporters harped on preponderance of white males among convention delegates.

"Of all the groups that are under-represented here, it has to be said that women are," declared Michel Martin on ABC late Monday night. "You know, men, according to an Associated Press poll, 61 percent of the delegates are male, only 34 percent are female, when of course in the general population it's the opposite. Fifty-one percent of the general population is female, and only 49 percent is male."

Apart from their unbearable whiteness of being, delegates were also pronounced guilty of another sin: wealth. Ed Bradley, the "60 Minutes" start reporter, told CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather that many "admit" being successful: "If you used a broad brush to paint these delegates, you'd say they're overwhelmingly conservative, white and well off. About a quarter of them admit that they're millionaires."

Of course, you would have to be a skunk at the liberal media garden party to explain why the GOP somewhat lacks ‘diversity" among its convention delegates. Unlike the GOP, the Democrats have a rigid quota program for the selection of delegates. . Goals are set by race; equal division by gender is required for all state delegations. The policy is so stringent that just last month a civil rights movement veteran scheduled to attend the Democrats convention was bounced from her state delegation because of a horrific gender imbalance: two more women then men. Out went Mamie Cunningham. Ironically enough, she was among the famous Mississippi "Freedom Party" activists who challenged the state’s all white delegation to the 1964 convention. Now a school teacher, Cunningham this year was replaced with a man. But this week came word that another woman delegate had offered to let Cunningham go in her place.

Delegates actually have little power. More generally, the Democrats’ longtime fixation on "diversity" among convention delegates is yet another manifestation of appearance over substance. Sadly, this year, the GOP has taken a great leap forward in that direction.

Perhaps Professor Kennedy can set both parties straight.

Evan Gahr is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.

The American Enterprise Online - www.TheAmericanEnterprise.org

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http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom_summer.htm

Freedom Summer Three CORE Members murdered in Mississippi

Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register blacks to vote during the summer of 1964. 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 black men 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. The inability to vote was only one of many problems blacks encountered in the racist society around them, but the civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter registration understood its crucial significance as well the white supremacists did. An African American voting bloc would be able to effect social and political change. 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). By mobilizing volunteer white college students from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public relations coup as hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the country to cover the voter-registration campaign. The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP) was a major focus of the summer program. More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a slate of sixty-eight delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of the delegates representing Mississippi's all white Democratic Party. While the effort failed, it drew national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of MFDP delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also lead to a ban on racially discriminatory delegations at future conventions. Freedom Summer officials also established 30 "Freedom Schools" in towns throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in Mississippi's educational system. Mississippi's black schools were invariably poorly funded, and teachers had to use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history. Many of the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools, whose curriculum included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership development in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic. The Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least 1000 students that first summer, and ended up with 3000. The schools became a model for future social programs like Head Start, as well as alternative educational institutions. 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. The murders made headlines all over the country, and provoked an outpouring of national support for the Civil Rights Movement. But many black volunteers realized that because two of the victims were white, these murders were attracting much more attention than previous attacks in which the victims had been all black, and this added to the growing resentment they had already begun to feel towards the white volunteers. There was growing dissension within the ranks over charges of white paternalism and elitism. Black volunteers complained that the whites seemed to think they had a natural claim on leadership roles, and that they treated the rural blacks as though they were ignorant. There was also increasing hostility from both black and white workers over the interracial romances that developed the summer. Meanwhile, women volunteers of both races were charging both the black and white men with sexist behavior. But despite the internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act , federal legislation that among other things outlawed the tactics Southern states had used to prevent blacks from voting. Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action. As Fannie Lou Hamer later said, "Before the 1964 project there were people that wanted change, but they hadn't dared to come out. After 1964 people began moving. To me it's one of the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi."

* * * * * * * * * *

Copyright © 2001 [CORE- Congress of Racial Equality]. All rights reserved.

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http://www.webactive.com/webactive/pacifica/demnow/dn20000229.html

February 29, 2000 on Democracy NOW!

Susie Erenrich, founder and Director of the Cultural Center for Social Change and editor of the new book Freedom is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (Published by Black Belt Press).

Story: FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE

Nearly 38 years after James Meredith struggled against racism to enter the University of Mississippi, students have elected the school's first black student body president. Nick Lott beat his white opponent by more than 100 votes.

But despite this, the school, which gained notoriety in 1962 when white students rioted against Meredith's registration, is suffering from strained race relations. Black students became the target this month of racist attacks and threats. A brick containing racial epithets was thrown through a dormitory window. After that, a flier about Black History Month was torn down and replaced with a computer-generated graphic with racist images, racial slurs and the confederate flag.

Today is the last day of Black History Month, and we are devoting part of this program to a remarkable chapter in American history: the freedom struggle in Mississippi.

A movie and a book have just come out: the film, "Freedom Song," starring Danny Glover, premiered on Sunday on TNT and it is the story of how the civil rights movement reached a small town in Mississippi.

The book is Freedom is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. It focuses on the critical year of 1964, when civil rights workers were beaten, jailed and murdered, yet freedom schools were established, thousands registered to vote and the Mississippi Freedom Party challenged segregated elections.

The book tells the stories of the participants of the Freedom Summer through songs, articles, photographs and drawings. It has the participation of historical figures of the civil rights movement, as well as its unsung heroes.

Les partis politiques aux Etats-Unis - Political parties in the USA