Mississippi Burning

A Summer of Hope.

In June 1964 the Council of Federated Organizations, a combination of four civil rights groups and the National Conference of Churches, organized what it called the Mississippi Summer Project. The project's purpose was to send northern college-student volunteers, mostly white, to Mississippi for the summer. There they were to work in "freedom schools" to teach blacks in the state about their constitutional rights and to take part in a campaign to assist black-voter registration. Another aim of the project was to gain greater national attention for the struggle against racial discrimination in Mississippi by involving large numbers of white civil rights workers. Unfortunately, while it succeeded in getting nationwide attention, it was at the cost of the lives of three workers based in Meridian, Mississippi. The three men were Michael Schwerner, twenty-four; James Chaney, twenty-one; and Andrew Goodman, twenty.

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