Mississippi Freedom Summer

In 1964, the Mississippi Summer Project, or Freedom Summer, was made to dramatically increase the voter registration in Mississippi. The population would constantly abuse all of the volunteers which were both white and black. Mississippi was chosen due to it's low levels of African-American voter registration. This sparked many attacks such as arson, false arrests, beatings, and at least three civil rights activists being murdered. The organizations that took the largest role in expanding the black vote in the South was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).

The first three hundred people arrived to register for voting on June 15, 1964. The very next day one African-American and two white students had gone missing. Their bodies were discovered six weeks later badly beaten. These murders partially derailed the project because the workers were surrounded by threats and violence, also resenting the slowness of the investigation and the lack of federal protection.

Fifty Freedom Schools were tasked with carrying on the community organizing for the Mississippi Project, but it only registered about twelve hundred African-Americans. In August the Democratic National Convention refused to seat a protest slate of delegates elected through COFO'S Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. All of the events that occurred during Freedom Summer made people who still believed in integration and nonviolence now doubted if racial equality would be achievable by peaceful means. While still being active after 1964 the civil rights movement began to lose solidarity.