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Freedom Summer is a documentary about the Mississippi Summer
Project, which was initiated to register Black voters in Mississippi in June,
1964.
From the start, I was struck by the number of comparisons I
could make from events in the movie to other occurrences in history and current
events. Within the first thirty minutes of the movie, the individuals being
interviewed talked about how white people in Mississippi thought Black people
would “take over” if they began voting. Another individual said, “the vote was
for white people.” This sounds very similar to the opinions of some Americans
who believe that undocumented immigrants from Asia and Latin America will take
over the country today.
When the Mississippi Summer Project began, southern whites
criticized it as a “communist” initiative. It humors me how frequently
Americans label groups “communist” whenever they feel threatened. This word has
been used to describe farm workers in California in the 60’s and Chinese
Americans during the Cold War. It reveals a disturbingly xenophobic tendency.
Freedom Summer starkly portrayed people’s humanity (or lack
thereof). The volunteers knew they were putting their lives in danger by
helping to register voters, but they stayed because they believed it was the
right thing to do. Looking back at that time, who would disagree? The narrative
being told in Freedom Summer is eerily similar to the current reality. There
are organizations in place today that are trying to register millions of people
who came to this country as immigrants. There are others who rave about how
“illegal” immigrants will steal “our” jobs. When we look back on this decade of history, what will
people say? Do we sympathize with the humanity of immigrants in this country?
Even the reluctance of the Mississippi constituents to
register in the documentary is still present today. In the documentary,
registering Black voters was slow work in the beginning. People were unwilling
to sign up for fear that they would lose their jobs, and rightfully so. In my experience,
registering Asian voters is equally difficult today. But the community in the
documentary did not fully mobilize until volunteers went missing, and bodies
were found. Do people have to die for our communities to recognize the urgency
of this issue?
I was particularly impacted by the stories of two women who
were included in the documentary. The first was Rita Schwerner, whose husband
was killed by the Klan during the Project. She said she would not cry in front
of any cameras because, “It would be offensive to everyone concerned.” I
thought this was a profound example of allyship. Schwerner seemed to understand
how much attention the press would give her if she cried. She would not give
the media the satisfaction of watching her mourn her late husband when
thousands of people mourned the deaths of far greater numbers of family members
in the South for centuries.
I was also moved by Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony. She was a
sharecropper from Mississippi who attended the Democratic National Conference
in 1964 to advocate for inclusion of people of color in the delegation from
Mississippi. Her testimony was very important, yet not all of it was included
in the documentary. In fact, the documentary seemed to focus more on how Lyndon
Johnson interrupted her speech. I had to go to Youtube to find the entirety of
her 8-minute testimony. I thought it was powerful that a Black woman came to be
the symbol of the Mississippi Summer Project. She talked about losing her job
just for trying to register to vote and about her time in jail. In the end, she
says, “Is this America, land of the free home of the brave…where our lives are
threatened daily because we want to live like decent human beings in America?”
I thought she was brave to say all of these things on national television. It
felt as though at that moment she carried the weight of her entire community.
I love watching moments like that. I wonder what they feel
like, to truly be a representative of a community.
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