Which is a true statement about the Freedom Summer campaign?
The Correct answer and Explanation is:
The correct statement about the Freedom Summer campaign is:
It focused on increasing voter registration among African Americans in Mississippi.
Explanation:
The Freedom Summer campaign of 1964 was a pivotal effort in the American Civil Rights Movement. Its primary goal was to increase voter registration among African Americans in Mississippi, a state where systemic racism and intimidation had severely limited Black citizens’ ability to participate in the democratic process. Despite the 15th Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote, Southern states like Mississippi had implemented discriminatory practices such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright violence to suppress the Black vote.
Organized by civil rights groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the campaign brought hundreds of volunteers—both Black and white, mostly college students from the North—to Mississippi. These volunteers worked to register African Americans to vote and to create Freedom Schools, where both children and adults could learn about their rights, history, and civic engagement.
The Freedom Summer campaign was met with fierce resistance. The Ku Klux Klan, local authorities, and white supremacists responded with violence and intimidation, including beatings, bombings, and murders. The most infamous incident was the killing of three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—by members of the KKK and local law enforcement. This tragedy shocked the nation and drew significant attention to the dangers faced by civil rights activists in the South.
Despite the violent backlash, Freedom Summer played a crucial role in raising awareness about racial injustice and helped pave the way for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which aimed to eliminate discriminatory voting practices across the United States.