FULL DOCUMENTARY - 1964: The Fight for a Right | MPB

the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America adopted by Congress in 1869, the

right

of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State or account of racial color or condition prior to bondage during Reconstruction, federal troops occupied Mississippi, among the laws they enforced was the constitutional amendment that guaranteed the

right

of all men to vote and the newly freed slaves voted with blacks and the majority in Mississippi, this state sent two black senators and one black congressman to Washington. at least 200 other blacks held public office they were republicans the party of lincoln they were deeply involved in the legislative process we had people elected to office across the state because they understood the value of impact on public policy and by actively participating they understood the value of passing from a position of slavery and servitude to being a citizen, but many white southerners did not support equality for blacks, worse yet, they took the law into their own hands.

It is murder, terror and violence that prevents black people from voting or doing this political work. what they had been doing in the mid 1870s, Reconstruction was over and the federal troops were gone, they say they are support for the newly freed people, so the Klan clicker, when the correct language took over, took over. mass murders and coups d'état occurred throughout the state of Mississippi. A trend that had begun just after the Civil War of

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participation by all Mississippi citizens was reversed and in 1890 Mississippi adopted a new constitution. Literacy tests and poll taxes that prevented large numbers of blacks from voting became Mississippi law. what was reverted was not a system of slavery but a system of segregation that made it illegal for blacks and whites to marry and made it illegal for blacks and whites to go back to school there made it illegal for blacks to vote without passing tests of literacy and grandfather clauses in poll taxes for the next 75 years was slavery, but by another name Jim Crow, the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote was not enforced.

African Americans in Mississippi had no equal under the law for most of life it was little or no better than under slavery, people really lived like it was the Middle Ages, they were fiefdoms on the plantations, if they went to school, They could only go to school a few months a year during the winter, when there was nothing to do. Otherwise, they were just animals to work on the plantation, they lived in virtual slavery. Man, I didn't have the rights they had to get up and go to work when they say they could lead a plantation to change their status.

Blacks had to vote, but the government and the Klan enforced poll taxes and literacy laws enacted in 1890, blacks trying to register had to know the state constitution, hit a cigar box or something, all this section of the Constitution shaking up everything you chose. a number so you had to quote any number he chose this section of the constitution exactly word for word most of the time it was just a farce and that made it worse when they chose an impossible question white people didn't have to go through all that and for most of the blanks, poll taxes were outrageously expensive, that the poll tax in some areas of the state could equal a month's pay for them, could equal a week's pay, it was a significant amount because African Americans They were being exploited as cheap labor.

They were not paid much for their work, so only those who had a little more means could even pay a poll tax. Weiss also threatens the livelihoods and lives of black people who tried to register many times they talk about Litora being shot to death They talk about what their homes would be like They talk about how they could lose the job they had, how they were going to feed their families, But World War II veterans who returned to Mississippi after risking their lives for their country found they weren't even allowed the basic right to vote when they began demanding their jobs.

The modern civil rights movement began. Violence began. Mississippi had more lynchings than any other state were killing people we had to resist to the end the poll taxes that or the literacy test we had this the blacks voted and in 1619 six and we have had nineteen fifty like the Mississippians we talk about and say that blacks didn't want to vote but not wanting to vote was far from the truth, veterans like Mayor Evers and Aaron Henry. They crossed for the right to vote. They want to ensure that citizens of this country can cast their vote without intimidation or voter suppression methods like the poll tax.

Those individuals formed the basis of the statewide n-double a-c-p. They also became a support network. for the young students and others, one of them was Bob Moses, a teacher from New York, he came to Mississippi and they started organizing throughout the state, so we actually started the project in the southwest corner of the McComb state, where the least of one percent of eligible blacks were registered to vote statewide the number was closer to five percent Macomb is where Hollis Watkins met Bob Moses he was working in voter registration trying to get blacks to register to vote so that they could start occupying political positions, so I told him that I would definitely be willing to be a part of that, a native of the region.

Watkins talked to friends, neighbors and anyone who would listen, what do you have to lose? Five people are killing black people anyway for no reason, we know that. So if by chance you end up losing your life, you know that for doing something that needs to be done and that will benefit your people as a whole, then you should be willing to do it because you don't know if they will come to take you. your life later today or tomorrow for no reason other than simply being black, understandably, although people were reluctant to register, they considered it something that went against the status quo, it was something that would cause serious harm, possibly death, to them, if they tried to register to vote, people still understood the need for the ballot people want jobs they want jobs they want to make it on their own these kinds of things and not get shot down every time you try to make a change education was the key to employment, to jobs, to security, you didn't have access to education if you didn't have the right to vote, so the cycle continued with the civil rights protests of the early 1960s in Mississippi or, gaining momentum and attention, the Freedom Rides had ended in Jackson, James Murden had entered the University of Mississippi, and in 1963 field secretary Medgar Evers, n-double-a-cp, was assassinated.

The mega murder really changed the consciousness of some people in the country and began the path where the action in Mississippi began to take on national importance, however, it was black. Voter registration was still pretty low in the fall of 1963, we had had a 90 percent failure rate and we had probably brought in ninety to a hundred thousand black people to take the test and only a few thousand passed it, so we were left clear. This path to voter registration has come to an end, it is at that point that we thought about leading the people, we had led four of us, but now we are thinking, let's do it on a larger scale, they design marked elections to teach the people. how to vote and they moved to Greenwood Greenland was chosen not because it was easier than the cold, if anything the Delta was going to be much harder, but we could also send people to the hardest place of all and use Greenwood as we anchor and We built from there, we set up our own parallel machinery so that people could register to vote if they couldn't register at the courthouse.

Aaron Henry ran for governor. Ed. King was the candidate for lieutenant governor. Bob Moses came to me and told me that we wanted to make this an interracial ticket and we needed to show that black people are willing to vote for a white candidate who supports their same goals, so candidates of both colors spoke on the relevant issues. to disenfranchisement, better education, employment and job training for black rural workers. or white, since the plantations were mechanical, we installed ballot boxes in the churches, in the pool halls, in the music venues and we let the people have a real vote tomorrow, we knew that we would not be elected because we were not in the real vote, but the feeling It was a real election, then in November 1963, they held the freedom vote, when we had the freedom vote, you know, we had somewhere around 80 or 4,000 people who participated in that, which showed that if this is open and fair, black people definitely registered and will definitely participate on election day through the voting process.

Outsiders came to help with this vote of freedom. One of them was Al Lowenstein. The people who run Mississippi today can only do so by force. They can't allow free elections in Mississippi because if they did, they wouldn't govern Mississippi. Al brings in students from Yale and Stanford to participate in those elections with white students involved. Violence against blacks decreased dramatically. An idea arose. Bring white students to Mississippi for a summer-long voter registration project. Not everyone thought this. It was a good idea. I was opposed to a large number of people coming from the north, but in

1964

some came again.

I had a feeling that by bringing all these young people from the north, they would take control and start doing whatever needed to be done. But after a few months they will be gone and now there are others who felt this was very dangerous, but what I thought was if we don't get American attention, those 30 or 40 low people are going to lose their jobs, one or two are going to be murdered in every county and we're not going to be able to even do the groundwork, so that was the The debate continued until they received a critical phone call.

Louis Allen was a black activist in Center County who had witnessed a racial murder and later spoke to the FBI. Now that Louis Allen had been killed, I think that was really the turning point in this. They're probably considered more together, you're going to have to do something else because we're dying. I leaned my weight on the summer project idea and we moved forward from there, hoping to descend into Mississippi this summer and upwards. 1,000 teachers, ministers, lawyers and students from all over the country when we announced that we were going to have this summer project and Mississippi went crazy and started forming the League of White Racists Whatever They're Called, right?

You have editorials in the national newspaper, you know? attack us as if we wanted to start another Civil War because in a sense you can say that we were actually in a war with really strategic things that said that one side was in everything except in terms of ideas and commitment and will and that was another side that was was underway and organizers began recruiting volunteers. Initial recruitment was through contacts that Al Lowenstein had at both Yale and Stanford and that occurred in the spring of

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on all university campuses. The recruitment, selection and beginning of the arrival of volunteers. so we felt that they would be called the children of the Constitution, that they were the white children that came to attract more attention, since people do not care about their children, our students recruited at the University of Wisconsin at Madison of this guy.

And I was in contact with some university chaplains, so I always felt like they really realize what we're asking them to do, but we're basically asking them to come and die with us because we were going to have a confrontation. We were going to bring everything to a critical point that we could in freedom. Somebody these young people believed in democracy and I think they volunteered because they were like two Americans and what they were saying is, "I'm here to right the wrong that's being done." This country and democracy saw these people suffer while the people suffered.

I mean, this is a basic right, the right to vote. I think a lot of people didn't understand this, and through the National Council of Churches, organizers set up training sessions at what was a slim Weston College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, very little of it was actually a classroom. , people would sit on the grass around, you know, in the shade of a tree and they would sit in a circle and talk as if it were both to get to know the volunteers and to get a sense of who they were and what they were about and to tell them. allowed us to get a sense of ourselves to talk about specific programs that were being carried out in different parts of thestate.

There was a lot of role-playing and discussion about what they might face in the state when when they came to the state, an Iowa minister and a Rams summer volunteer barber stayed with a local family in Canton, they were risking the neck, you know, I mean the people who housed us, the white people knew who it was. By doing that, the police would come by and know where you were staying and who was holding you and all that kind of stuff, so it was dangerous for them, but the main message was just being in Mississippi being part of the black community if you just go and really find out how you can be a person that lives in this family in this black community and get to know the people that you live with because with you comes the country and the country will see through your eyes and everything you have to do What's there What to do is be there and survive and they meant survive in the training sessions in Ohio.

The organizers emphasize the risks that we have, we need to make sure we tell everyone and be very specific and clear, and that is that if you come to Mississippi you need to know that you need to be prepared. get beaten, go to jail, and get killed, and if you're not prepared for all three, we suggest you go home and do everything you can to help an assistant movement of theirs. President Johnson has ordered that 200 Marines and eight helicopters join the search for three civil rights workers in Mississippi in the first days of the Mississippi summer project three volunteers went missing the entire state is prepared for these people who are coming that they consider invaders and here comes a small group , a vanguard, if you will, one of the volunteers was Mickey Schwerner, he and his wife Rita had arrived in Meridian in January.

James Chaney was a native of Mississippi and Andrew Goodman had been in Mississippi, just over 24 hours, the three headed to Neshoba County to investigate a church that had been burned and to support the parishioners. The United States found out much later that the three had been murdered by local police, but first they searched, we had checked all the prisons, all the hospitals. four or five counties and we assumed they hadn't been in a car accident or that the hospital, you know, would admit to having them. We did not believe the jailers, although the three were classified as missing.

Moses was sure they were dead at the Ohio training session. He spoke to volunteers who were about to leave for Mississippi. My concern is that they now really understand on a deeper level what they've gotten themselves into, that they live in a country where law enforcement officers will murder students now because they're doing something they believe. It is contrary to their beliefs about how this country should run. My goal was to make it clear to them that those young men who were dead and that they should not come down unless they were willing to face that when they announced the word to me.

I saw a certain degree of disbelief I saw expressions of sadness I saw expressions of indecision and after a song or something like that was said, I saw a process of collectivity begin to take place in which people pulled themselves together and began to say: I'm going to continue. In Mississippi, the federal government offered a reward of $25,000 for information, but FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said that they had seen them in Brazil and that they are not missing out on all these things here. This is a ploy and a part of the civil rights workers to get attention, you know, and they knew all along where the bodies were at Tougaloo University.

King was receiving information from two women near the scene of the murders who went missing on Sunday. On Thursday they told me that the bodies were in a new dam under construction. the search for the missing volunteers continued for 44 days, they were finding bodies since June when the children were missing, chaining them from missing to that period of time while they found bodies, also opened up the reality that this was not an anomaly. was no exception this was the step in the way Mississippi operated and that those black bodies did not have the same value as those two individuals who happen to be from New York.

I'll never forget the August night the second we were in Mount Olive Baptist Church folk singer Pete Seeger was in the middle of a concert. I remember someone whispered to you and before singing the next song he said: I have something to announce to you. They have found the bodies and, suddenly, we wake up. and we held hands and began to sing, we will overcome, we would determine that they will not have died in vain, so instead of intimidating us it had the opposite effect on us and I think the death of Chaney Goodman Schwerner only accelerated the realities of terror. that Mississippians will live living in my fellow Americans.

I am about to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, although Mississippi senators fought the bill, the state watched as President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, we believe that all men They are entitled to the blessings of freedom, yet millions are being deprived of those blessings not because of their own failures but because of the color of their skin when a Civil Rights Act was passed, you know, it says that finally at least The federal government seemed so if it is listening and watching the atrocities and things that we, as black people, have had to go through and are still going through, and at least it will get one of the defeats that falls on us and our necks, the We will get out where we can breathe, get some fresh air and do something we had a right to do, but for all its promise, the Civil Rights Act did not contain any provisions on voting, we wanted to keep the focus on voting rights and we didn't want people celebrating a victory over a lunch counter and a cup of coffee as if we had achieved, you know, the greatest achievement that could happen.

The Mississippi Summer Project volunteers worked hard, canvassed door to door, sat around the kitchen table and talked about what they wanted. life and how they would like to see their community change for the better we use school boards as examples in voter registration drives and people would say well what difference does it make? Why should I risk my job or risk my life or risk my home? get burned just to try to register to vote and then we could talk not about who to choose between governor or senator, but about the local school board and then we would move on to and what would happen if there was a difference in the local sheriff. but I think an example of that plane shows how a small opportunity that people had at the grassroots level to work for their own change in their own survival.

The accounting police followed us and parked their car on the street when we approached a door that people have. people go out the window and say go away come back another time I can't talk to when the police came so they were effective in intimidating some people so they wouldn't talk to us there were other people who were still afraid to try it. to register to vote that they would lose their jobs but who said I will feed people? I will bring food to church three nights a week. The volunteers faced even greater challenges in the Delta, we had to sleep in the plantations and work just to talk to people because she couldn't, can you, you know, they just drove there, they were wearing overalls, it became a fee, but in reality it was not that every hour they did not identify us, say that we could, we could walk between the people and you.

We knew they couldn't, they couldn't rigidly identify us and listen, they had other ways, although the focus was on voter registration. Freedom Summer organizers realized that other areas needed attention, so we brought in topics focused on healthcare. A medical group that came in education was. to the development of freedom schools in others, so we tried to address all of those particular issues that people in the state and across the country were facing. The medical committee for Human Rights was the medical committee for Human Rights, the few doctors here and when I say the few doctors here dr.

Britton, Anderson and I discovered that the summer project that was supposed to bring thousands of volunteers to the state of Mississippi was approaching. We said it was my guy who would take care of all these people, at least the southern branch where the Human Rights medical community was. It started in my office, you know, a week before the summer project started, education became freedom schools, now Freedom Schools were different, the citizenship education piece was basically preparing people so that they could read and write and be able to pass, as Lewis attests. That happened, but freedom school was about academics, it was about getting people to understand their duties and their rights, it was about getting them to overcome fear as part of that, it was more, as I see it, about the freedom of leadership development. the schools were a great success, thousands of students attended, both young and old, but the focus remained on the right to vote, we had to be people that every time the state stepped in and arrested us or did something to us, then prima facie the reason is because they are voting.

Registration work and during the long, hot Mississippi summer voter registration continued. I am here to mobilize support for the Democratic Party for freedom and to support the tremendous quest for the right to vote by the people of the state of Mississippi and in the midst of bombings, murders and many of the other difficult experiences that black people face here along with our allies in the white community, just as anti-black violence had its roots in Reconstruction, so did the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party after federal troops withdrew in blunts. those who were Republicans were prevented from voting the Mississippi state legislature became solidly Democratic in 1964 all state senators, our representative was a white Democrat, a Dixiecrat White ran under the Democratic banner because he was the Republican president they failed, It took away their way of life and so Fast forward over a hundred years and we have a state political party that decided that the political platform of the state party for individuals to participate in will be a segregated platform.

We had tried to go to the precinct caucus meetings of a regular Democratic Party and they shut the door. In other words, in some cases they see us coming when it was about two or three of them, they get into a vehicle and drive everything we wanted to change a corrupt system or a discriminatory system or party for one that was open and free so that all people could come. and they are part, so we try to talk again about heigen and that is to replicate the democratic party process with the exception of the factors that did not have to go through all the tests that they had.

I had to count the number of peas at work, but I had to estimate voter registration during Freedom Summer. He took a two-pronged approach: there was legal registration in the state and there were freedom registrations with the new Democratic Party. They showed that people wanted to participate. For voting, we were trying to show that people could participate and organize their own county conventions and that kind of thing, so we had a lot of people, thousands of people register with the freedom. Democratic Party organizers wanted a political system that was free. and open to all to open the state, Mississippi's new Democratic freedom on a national level.

The initial idea came from a volunteer team from Lawrence suggesting that we go to the Democratic convention and not just do things within the state and we decided, oh, that's crazy, but it's good. idea and we began the process of thinking about challenging the Mississippi State Democratic Party at the national convention, every delegate representing Mississippi at that national convention would be white and these Democrats openly and defiantly supported the Republican Party candidate, Barry Goldwater, to to be able to effectively challenge the Mississippi. Delegate and sit at the convention. Everyone in the Freedom Democratic Party must follow exactly the established procedures and bylaws of the National Democratic Party.

We were developing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party of the mfdp and so the local people learned and we followed the rules of the state. on how to organize a party and a delegation for a national convention, we had hundreds of these local district meetings across the state, then we had to move to a county meeting and then to a congressional district, the last step was the state convention They convened on August 6 at the Jackson Masonic Temple and elected 68 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The delegates who passed would be people who could stand up and would not be afraid in the kind of intense scrutiny and already know the political atmosphere of a convention they were going to. be people who could look you straight in the eyes and say what theythey thought, so we were excited because they had broken all the rules and we had followed all the rules and we are going to enter a parallel annex to the leader. and state convention organizers were also working outside of Mississippi.

We had promises of support from Michigan to New England to California, where people had said we wanted to support the Mississippi

fight

. When we got to the convention, some people thought that our cause was so pure that we would totally win and who was almost like a guarantee that we would receive, but other forces were at play Lyndon Johnson, who had become president after the assassination of John Kennedy wanted to receive this official nomination in a non-contentious convention. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota was the vice presidential favorite to get the presidency, he would have to come up with a resolution to the Democratic Party's freedom challenge, he would have to figure out how to solve it so that it didn't split the party into the traditional Democratic Party.

They worked to erode the support their rivals had gained. The first step of the Freedom Democrats was to present their case to the credentials committee that we expected to lose in the credentials committee, but what we would then force would be a vote and an open vote in the convention itself and we would get a Minority Report and we had the votes to do it and that would have sparked a discussion on national television about the racism at the heart of American political institutions in 1964 all aspects of the convention were televised Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the Liberty Democrats who was She was scheduled to speak in front of the credentials committee as she prepared to testify.

Johnson appeared on national television to erase her testimony, but they replayed it that night and flooded the convention with telegrams. The testimony really touched people without telephone capital because I live every day because we want to. live is a human being in America and the world saw this on television, you have to do something so that President Johnson's people offered a compromise, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party could attend the convention but not vote, the delegation rejected this, what we wanted was a traditional political agreement in which votes and seats would be divided between two rival parties, neither of them wanted to be sent home, but if they only had half a vote then 50 new ones could be added people from a rival delegation and let them be part of it, although this commitment was president, the White House rejected this offer and Johnson did not want the challenge to reach the

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convention.

Humphrey knew the consequences of continued discord. Humphrey noted that the president has said that he understands the South, if we hold out through the election, the white South will become solidly Republican because of what Furthermore, you in the mfdp are doing it if he became vice president, Humphrey would provide the private people of their rights better health care and if we elect Johnson we will get socialized medicine and we will get better and we will get social welfare, we will get better education in the schools that we will work in. To support the unions the south needs, we will do better things for seniors.

Social security will be improved and if you understand all that, you may not understand the terrible war we are having in Vietnam and the peace of the world. at stake, but the freedom delegates still thought they should sit down when Humphrey refused to let the lady. Hamer spoke to him directly and said: Senator Humphrey, if you take this job this way with this kind of commitment, you will never be able to do anything for world peace, for the education of old Americans, you will never be able to, Senator Humphrey, I will have to do it. . Pray to Jesus for you not to meet with her after that, finally on Wednesday, five full days after arriving in Atlantic City, some of the Liberty Democrats were called to a meeting at the Humphreys Hotel and told that they will accept a compromise that the regular Democratic delegates will be.

They will be required to pledge support to President Johnson. There will be new rules that guarantee the participation of blacks in future conventions. Aaron Henry and Ed King would sit as at-large delegates. The rest of Mississippi's freedom. The Democratic Party could attend but not vote. Ed King offered to resign. I seat him so that the lady. Hamer was able to sit in her place and then they told us no because Mrs. Hamer can't be in this, that's not really how we saw it as a compromise and then on top of that, they wanted to name the two people who were going to sit down, so it's like saying, "Give us everything you have and we'll" .

I'll look into it and tell you which one is legit and to me that was a big slap in the face. The president was naming four black Mississippians who would be his leaders and even Aaron said it looks too much like the plantation everyone knows just like we do. the Democratic Party did not follow their own rules and processes to get people to this point and we went exactly according to the process that we have yet to be shown that we say they were pushed to the curb others thought that ceasing was showing progress freedom The Democrats met with Humphrey said the entire delegation had to decide on this latest offer at which point one of Humphreys aides came in and said that the television had just announced that the mfdp had accepted this all the television cameras outside because, Unbeknownst to us, the credentials committee had also agreed to this, so they had reached an agreement, the credentials committee was going to announce it and then we were going to announce it well so that that would not happen, what we did was a protest after the fact that the entire delegation met at the Union Baptist Church.

The delegation said no and they said it with pride and it was a powerful decision that they would not follow the ordinary rules if the ordinary rules meant something as intriguing and twisted as what that Wednesday afternoon at the Democratic convention for the freedom of Mississippi the Democrats white regulars were already gone. their seats had been removed freedom Democrats watched as Lyndon Johnson was nominated by acclamation their voices were never heard the next day they returned home seeing some of the accomplishments that made them feel good, but at the same time we knew that the things we stood for, the things we were

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ing for, that fight still had to continue, we had not yet solved the problem of the human being considered human, we forced the nation to face the fact that African Americans in Mississippi were not being treated with equal protection under the law that must be granted to all citizens, changed the course of history not only for Mississippi, not only for the South, but for the nation, with even the Democratic governor voting Republican.

Mississippi party politics moved away from its solidly Democratic status. Basing the very notion that African Americans are equal to whites on this state is something that many whites could not accept and that is why from that point we saw a mass exodus of whites in Mississippi leaving the Democratic Party trapped in the hands of the Republican Party, but The Liberty Democrats who had been rejected by President Johnson actually campaigned for him in his campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater. From that moment on, here and in other southern states there was an effort to get new black leadership from an upper-middle class group that could play by traditional rules, Humphrey came in with the war on poverty and openly said that that It would be a way to build a new interracial Democratic Party, but it was still not egalitarian; whoever black leaders emerged would have to be acceptable in the coming months.

Freedom Summer black voter registration remained low: six point seven percent of those eligible under the Fifteenth Amendment. The eligible African American population in Mississippi was registered to vote, which even compared to other southern states was surprisingly then, on August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed another piece of historic legislation the Voting Rights Act then we began to see a tremendous increase in the participation of African Americans in the electoral process who wanted to have a voice that in democracy public policies were developed and determined at the polling place Robert chin saw the impact in Canton Hey, fellow registrars, come on, They set up an office in Peach Creek and man, we get people to register, we have thousands, there are no people, we are delighted in Madison County, there, the year 1968, the next presidential election, about 60% of African Americans in Mississippi were registered, which was the highest in the region, but what was not taken into account was that we thought that our redistricting in the majority black Mississippi Delta had long been the 2nd Congressional district when the Voting Rights Act became law.

Mississippi read across border lines to cause the black population to decrease. in four separate congressional districts, they essentially nullified what the Voting Rights Act was supposed to have given us, divided in the Delta area between four different congressional districts, they made sure that blacks in Mississippi could not elect a representative of their election o If the voters liked the black official, his authority would be favored by the majority of whites, so it's like you celebrate this victory and you win, and what happens to you later you find out, but you have been deceived and you have evaded again.

He is a state senator. Henry Kirksey 14 years in nine trips to the United States Supreme Court to achieve more equitable district lines. Well, I think this is a big step, it will open the door to other people of my race and I think this will change the way they think. of some of our people who have been reluctant to use the ballot 1967 marked another voting milestone in Mississippi Robert G. Clarke was elected to the Capitol he was the first black legislator since Reconstruction perhaps more significant than his election to the legislature was At the municipal level there were several African Americans who were elected at that time, but it was in the majority black counties and cities that the exercise of African American voting power was really seen in the summer of 1968.

Four years had passed from the Mississippi. The freedom of the Democratic Party had challenged at the Democratic National convention we had won a ruling that at the next Democratic convention in 1968 and forever after no group could be excluded and mother Sam of '68, that meant women and it meant college students and for the next 30 years. They had been Hispanics and American Indians or any kind of subgroup that could prove that they were denied their rights as Americans. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was once again headed to the National Convention and at least some of them were seated.

The delegates included members of the no. -double a-cp freedom Both Democrats and Young Democrats were a loyal delegation people who identified with the National Democratic Party in the 1970s most Mississippi schools desegregated William Waller and later William Winter were elected Governor were racially progressive men and the rise of the black vote helped put them in office, and while there was still a shortage at the state level in the mid-1970s, Mississippi had more black elected officials than any other southern state. In our 2014 election coverage, Mississippi voters will have to follow new Voter ID laws when they go to the polls for their primaries tomorrow.

We're still fighting fights from the 1960s. Voter ID is what we're facing right now. Every study that has been done shows that it will have a disparate impact on African Americans. about the poor about the elderly, how they are going to do it is a disassembly. I advise against ten or fifteen percent and the whole aspect of any choice changes. Why should we have early voting? Why should we have same day registration? We have the systems in place, you show. If you submit your information, you can rest and vote in the place that is free and open democracy, and today activists are also concerned about the Supreme Court's recent changes to the Voting Rights Act: they eliminated the prior authorization provision for the old segregationist states, essentially the In the state of Mississippi, any other state really has no restrictions on how they change election laws and if we don't do something about it, then there will be sadder days in Mississippi and this country has a demographic practically evolving. potential for change Mississippi in 20 years will not look like the Mississippi of today and certainly will not look like the Mississippi of 20 years ago older voters people who attended segregated schools tend to vote along racial lines once they leave the electorate that We will be replaced by voters who are not soconservatives like them.

The gridlock that has long persisted in Mississippi politics may well reach a pretty radical breaking point in the next 10 to 20 years, so today we can calculate How did you get students to take the same position? I think your young people have to be at the forefront of combating the things that discriminate against people who live in this country and they also have to be at the forefront of providing solutions that open this country to everyone who is here and then what What can we do to change the things that have deprived many Mississippians of the quality of life and respect for rights they deserve and look where you live and do that? you will find a lot of things that need to be eliminated and a lot of things that need to be changed for the better, if there are organizations already working on them see if you can join us, if there are no organizations then look started, but civil rights veterans are not there either resting the fight continues and you know there is no stop place arrest you can retreat for a minute but the fight continues so that people shake their hands and say it's done, it's not done, it's almost done I just started with everything that is happening with all the things that need to be done, as long as you have some strength and energy to do something that improves.

I want to be found doing it. You can find out more about the many aspects of Freedom Summer and take a simple literacy test on our website mpbonline.org slash in 1964 the real heroes of the movement in Mao's pain were the local population, but the people lived in the forests and things like that I still don't know what happened to them, you know, and they had to face this alone on a day-to-day basis to have the will to get up and go to the polls and go to Atlantic City, I mean, it took a lot more courage than a lot of us who weren't from Mississippi, a lot of people we don't know anything about, we don't talk about it, D is made just to make it possible for you to know that I could do the little idea, you know, so I'm always honored by the thought of what happened