10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed The World: Freedom Summer

FREEDOM SUMMER

June 21, 1964 was the day civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Philadelphia, Mississippi. A watershed moment in the American civil rights movement, the young men's disappearance and the discovery of their bodies six weeks later, riveted the nation and finally exposed the ugly secret of racist violence in the South, eventually spurring Congress and President Johnson to enact the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965. For decades, black Mississippians had been systematically denied the right to vote by threats, intimidation and the requirement that they pass a "literacy test" administered by corrupt election officials. In the early 1960s, when black civil rights activists began organizing citizens to overcome these barriers to the polling booth, they became the target of a wave of deadly violence at the hands of white hate groups. mber that there was a time , not so long ago, when registering to vote could get you killed," said Williams. "But this event is also a way to examine more deeply the troubling issue of race relations that has confounded Americans for over 200 years".