As advocates throughout the nation rally to register voters forward of November’s 2024 presidential election, Leslie McLemore, the Rev. Rims Barber and Euvester Simpson – three of the remaining foot troopers who championed the battle for voting rights in 1964 Mississippi – recall a time when registering Black voters price some People their lives.
“I imply, simply the thought of the act of going from your own home to the county courthouse to register to vote, , you had been placing your life on the road,” McLemore, who was a 20-year-old pupil on the Mississippi HBCU Rust School in 1964, advised GMA3 Co-Anchor DeMarco Morgan.
In interviews with Morgan, the three voting rights advocates mirrored on their involvement 60 years in the past within the historic Freedom Summer season Undertaking – a groundbreaking motion in Mississippi that, in line with the Martin Luther King Analysis and Training Institute at Stanford College, highlighted the necessity for federal voting rights laws and fueled political momentum that might convey the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into fruition.
“If you happen to tried to register to vote, a part of the method was they’d publish your title for 2 weeks in a neighborhood newspaper,” McLemore mentioned, reflecting on the intimidation that Black voters had been subjected to on the top of Jim Crow, when legal guidelines enforced racial segregation and discrimination in opposition to Black People and federal voting rights protections didn’t exist.
Civil Rights Veterans Leslie McLemore, Rev. Rims Barber & Euvester Simpson on the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
Terri Lynn Martin/ABC Information
From violence and ballot taxes to literacy checks, Black voters confronted a variety of techniques to intimidate them as they registered to vote, in line with Stanford’s MLK Analysis and Training Institute.
“You’ll have a greater life for the longer term?” Morgan requested.
“Yeah, I’d have. My household would have a greater life,” McLemore responded.
McLemore, Simpson and Barber joined the Mississippi Freedom Summer season challenge – an unprecedented voter registration drive that was the brainchild of the long-lasting civil rights advocate Bob Moses, a co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Get together, and one which was a collaboration between 4 main civil rights organizations of the time, together with the NAACP.
“I can’t describe to you ways I felt as a participant within the civil rights motion. And I knew we had been doing one thing essential, that we had been serving to to vary Mississippi,” McLemore mentioned.
Freedom summer season demonstrations in Drew, Miss., in 1964.
Tracy Sugarman/Jackson State College through Getty Photos, FILE
In response to Stanford’s MLK institute, the primary group of roughly 1,000 volunteers – the vast majority of which had been white school college students from the North – started coaching on June 14, 1964, at Western School for Ladies in Oxford, Ohio, earlier than heading to Mississippi to assist register Black voters.
“The thought behind that of Freedom Summer season was that if well-to-do white folks’s kids got here to Mississippi to assist on this effort to get Black folks registered to vote, then absolutely the higher-ups on the White Home would take discover and supply some kind of safety,” Simpson advised Morgan.
However just one week after that first group of volunteers arrived in Oxford, three civil rights staff who had been a part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer season challenge – James Chaney, a Black man from Mississippi and two white males from the North – Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman — who had been investigating the burning of a church in Philadelphia, Mississippi – had been reported lacking in Mississippi.
“Phrase got here that they had been lacking,” mentioned Simpson, who was mates with two of the three males who he would later study had been kidnapped after which murdered. “And naturally that put a damper on all the pieces.”
In response to Stanford’s MLK Institute, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was invited in 1964 by Moses to Greenwood, Mississippi, the place he confirmed his help for the voter-registration challenge and inspired Black Mississippians to vote.
Freedom summer season demonstrations in Drew, Miss., in 1964.
Tracy Sugarman/Jackson State College through Getty Photos, FILE
However lower than three weeks after King’s go to, the our bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had been discovered buried in a dam in Neshoba County, in line with the U.S. Division of Justice. Their story is depicted within the 1988 movie, “Mississippi Burning.”
Whereas the kidnapping and homicide of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner intensified fears, it didn’t deter the advocates of the Mississippi Summer season Undertaking, a few of whom had their houses or church bombed, had been overwhelmed or killed.
“I imply, it was harmful, after all, and folks had been nonetheless regularly getting harassed and murdered,” Simpson mentioned.
She was 17 years previous on the time and mentioned that she was as soon as jailed for her advocacy with civil rights legend Fannie Lou Hamer, who was the co-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Get together. The celebration was shaped by Black residents of Mississippi, as a part of the Freedom Summer season challenge, who weren’t permitted to take part in conferences of the state Democratic Get together.
On this Aug. 6, 1965 file photograph President Lyndon B Johnson arms a pen to civil rights chief Reverend Martin Luther King Jr in the course of the the signing of the voting rights act as officers look on behind them, Washington DC.
Washington Bureau/Getty Photos, FILE
“I do know you talked about being shot at. The Klan coming after you,” Morgan advised Barber, a Freedom Summer season volunteer in 1964 who moved to Mississippi from Iowa to affix the motion.
“I’ve been shot at a number of occasions. I’ve been jailed a number of occasions,” Barber mentioned.
In response to Stanford’s MLK Institute, the Freedom Summer season challenge targeted on voter registration as a result of in the summertime of 1964 there have been 17,000 Black residents of Mississippi who tried to register to vote, however solely about 1,600 of the purposes submitted had been accepted by the native registrars.
“I used to be simply so impressed with the those who I used to be attempting to assist out and what they had been doing and the braveness they’d,” Barber mentioned.
Freedom Summer season Demonstrations in Greenville, Miss., ” Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner are lacking” Greenville picket line in 1964.
Tracy Sugarman/Jackson State College through Getty Photos, FILE
Reflecting on Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic run, McLemore mentioned that the evening Harris turned the primary lady and lady of shade to simply accept the nomination for president, she mirrored on 1964 and people who joined her within the motion, together with Hamer, who represented the Freedom Democratic Get together in the course of the 1964 Democratic Nationwide Conference in Atlantic Metropolis, New Jersey.
“I mirrored again on the truth that in 1964, so many people – 68 of us – went to Atlantic Metropolis as part of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Get together,” McLemore mentioned. “And I used to be pondering and reflecting on the testimony of Mrs. Hamer earlier than the credentials committee in Atlantic Metropolis and what her testimony meant and what the efforts of the Freedom Democratic Get together meant. That celebration supplied the platform that the vice chairman was standing on as a result of we had made a mark.”
