Fannie Lou Hamer, known as the lady who was "sick and tired of being sick and tired," was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She was the granddaughter of slaves. Her family were sharecroppers - a position not that different from slavery. Hamer had 19 brothers and sisters. She was the youngest of the children.
In 1962, when Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC volunteers came to town and held a voter registration meeting. She was surprised to learn that African-Americans actually had a constitutional right to vote. When the SNCC members asked for volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer was the first to raise her hand. This was a dangerous decision. She later reflected, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."
When Hamer and others went to the courthouse, they were jailed and beaten by the police. Hamer's courageous act got her thrown off the plantation where she was a sharecropper. She also began to receive constant death threats and was even shot at. Still, Hamer would not be discouraged. She became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote.
Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). In 1964, the MDFP challenged the all-white Mississippi delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Hamer spoke in front of the Credentials Committee in a televised proceeding that reached millions of viewers. She told the committee how African-Americans in many states across the country were prevented from voting through illegal tests, taxes and intimidation. As a result of her speech, two delegates of the MFDP were given speaking rights at the convention and the other members were seated as honorable guests.
Hamer was an inspirational figure to many involved in the struggle for civil rights. She died on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59.
http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/mfdp.html
The Freedom Ballot set the stage for the Mississippi Summer Project, organized primarily by Bob Moses. SNCC worked hard in the winter and spring of 1963-64 preparing for the project, which was an urgent call to action for students in Mississippi to challenge and overcome the white racism in the state of Mississippi.
In the prospectus circulated to college campuses that summer, the mission was stated: "...As the winds of change grow stronger, the threatened political elite of Mississippi becomes more intransigent and fanatical…Negro efforts to win the right to vote cannot succeed…without a nationwide mobilization of support. A program is planned for this summer which will involve the massive participation of Americans dedicated to the elimination of racial oppression…"
The Mississippi Summer Project had three goals: registering voters, operating Freedom Schools, and organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) precincts. One strategy of the project was to hold Freedom Days every two or three weeks. On Freedom Day, SNCC gathered black people together to collectively try to register to vote. However, SNCC faced the challenge of overcoming intimidation by whites, as several people had been killed on Freedom Days across the state.
The Freedom Schools helped the Freedom Days succeed. These schools taught children, many of who couldn't yet read or write, to stand up and demand their freedom. The children returned home and told their parents about the Freedom Days and convinced them to register for freedom.
Attempts to get people to attend MFPD meetings also suffered from intimidation by whites. Three men associated with the Freedom Democratic Party disappeared that summer. They turned up dead with fatal gunshot wounds--one with blows that crushed many of his bones. When asked by the media if she thought something positive would come from the triple assassination, Rita Schwerner, a member of CORE working out of Washington, said, "That is up to the people of the United States."
SNCC's reacted to the deaths with a renewed sense of dedication. Their goal was to take the MFPD to the Democratic National convention that summer in Atlantic City, to the "elected representatives of the United States." SNCC wanted the MFPD to represent Mississippi rather than the state's current delegation.
The MFPD had worked long and hard to prove that they were morally and politically entitled to the seats, but the Democratic Party was not convinced. They offered a compromise of two non-voting seats next to the regular Mississippi delegates. After much deliberation that involved Martin Luther King's support of the compromise, SNCC refused the Democratic Party's offer. SNCC and the MFPD were there to gain voting seats and since that could not be accomplished, they left the convention defeated but proud.
------
http://www.frontpagemag.com/dh/2000/dh08-21-00.htm
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz082200.asp
DAVID HOROWITZ
Right On!
Back to the Future End of the Line for the “New Democrats”
Jewish World Review
The Democratic delegates are also far wealthier than most of the people (57% had incomes over $75,000) and far more of them are members of unions (31%). They are also more African American (by 80%) and more Native American (by 30%) than the general population (LA Times 8/14/2000), and who knows how much more or less Armenian, Russian, Arab, Jewish, Polish, or take your pick of any non-politically correct category, since our leftwing media can’t be bothered to ask about such “over-represented” groups.
This ethnic distortion is explained by the fact that the political mentality of the Democratic Party is now so rooted in the discredited past that it has a rigid racial and gender quota system for delegates. How rigid? A black female delegate from Mississippi was denied a seat because the quota for women had already been exceeded. As if to underscore the unseemly irony of liberals’ 180 degree about-face on civil rights since the 1960s, the woman in question had been one of the original Mississippi Freedom Party delegates who, in a legendary moment of the civil rights struggle, were denied seats at the 1964 Democratic convention simply because they were black.
The Democratic Party is now a party of the last century (or perhaps even the previous one) -- a party of racial quotas, and racial preferences, of class warfare and impossible socialist dreams. As Jesse Jackson said, on the second convention night, it’s not just about race or gender; it’s about “redistributionism.”
-----------
http://www.theamericanenterprise.org/hotflash0802.htm
August 2, 2000
THE "DIVERSIFIED" GOP Racial politics at the convention.
Some years back in Washington, DC, at an otherwise unremarkable conference where most panelists laid themselves prostate before the Gods of diversity, Harvard Law School professor Randy Kennedy dissented. But his critique was remarkably innovative. Instead of citing the importance of individual merit and other concepts which elicit sneers from the left, Kennedy beat the liberals at their own game.
Kennedy said the emphasis on a presidential cabinet or workforce that "looks like America" is profoundly misguided. Normally, of course, harping on "looks" is considered shallow and unfair. I would add that both are cardinal liberal sins. The PC crowd rails against "lookism" and even demands laws against discrimination based on appearance. But, as Kennedy shrewdly observed, the "diversity" obsession places looks above most other values. Sadly, it seems that in many respects the GOP now does also.
The New York Times, which usually gushes over diversity schemes, was remarkably, albeit justifiably, skeptical about the GOP’s own transparent effort in Philadelphia yesterday. "The 37th Republican convention opened when Erik Weihenmayer, a blind mountain climber, led the delegates in th e Pledge of Allegiance. Throughout the day, a parade of women, blacks, Latinos and recovered Democrats marched to the rostrum in a show that more resembled an Up With People jamboree than a hard-driving, calculated effort to retake the White House," wrote New York Times reporter Richard Berke. "Despite the understated references to the current administration, the words ‘Clinton,’ ‘abortion’ and ‘impeachment’ appeared to have been banished from the scripts today. Even Newt Gingrich was far removed from the action; his role tonight was as a commentator for Fox News. "
With the man who helped the GOP regain Congress now stashed away with all the other talking heads, the showcased speaker was Colin Powell. A man of genuine accomplishment on the battle field and elsewhere, Powell is renowned for his steely Horatio Alger life story and seemingly exemplary family life. Never mind the content of his character. Powell was on stage to remind folks just how inclusive the GOP really is.
Here was the GOP’s new face. Great, if you only care about looks. But he sounded and acted like an unrepentant liberal. His call for special GOP "outreach" efforts to minorities-as if standard GOP values of low taxes and less government won’t resonate with them just like everyone else-quickly degenerated into self-flagellation. "Some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped [thousands of ] black kids get an education." But "hardly a whimper is heard from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests."
Actually, affirmative action doesn’t help anyone "get an education" that they might otherwise be denied. It determines which particular school the beneficiaries of racial preference policies shall be educated. Even most liberals don’t suggest that "affirmative action" alone helps anyone attend college. Instead, they suggest persons of color are locked out of particularly prestigious schools because of biased standardized tests and other tools of the white male power structure. And whatever you make of GOP tax policy or the notion that the GOP convention should provide a platform for the kind of "class warfare arguments," favored by Democrats, Powell typecast the GOP rather unfairly. Many conservatives, after all, rail against "corporate welfare" and other boondoggles for big business.
Despite a hearty serving of "diversity" and liberal cliches, the media beast was largely unsatisfied. Many reporters harped on preponderance of white males among convention delegates.
"Of all the groups that are under-represented here, it has to be said that women are," declared Michel Martin on ABC late Monday night. "You know, men, according to an Associated Press poll, 61 percent of the delegates are male, only 34 percent are female, when of course in the general population it's the opposite. Fifty-one percent of the general population is female, and only 49 percent is male."
Apart from their unbearable whiteness of being, delegates were also pronounced guilty of another sin: wealth. Ed Bradley, the "60 Minutes" start reporter, told CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather that many "admit" being successful: "If you used a broad brush to paint these delegates, you'd say they're overwhelmingly conservative, white and well off. About a quarter of them admit that they're millionaires."
Of course, you would have to be a skunk at the liberal media garden party to explain why the GOP somewhat lacks ‘diversity" among its convention delegates. Unlike the GOP, the Democrats have a rigid quota program for the selection of delegates. . Goals are set by race; equal division by gender is required for all state delegations. The policy is so stringent that just last month a civil rights movement veteran scheduled to attend the Democrats convention was bounced from her state delegation because of a horrific gender imbalance: two more women then men. Out went Mamie Cunningham. Ironically enough, she was among the famous Mississippi "Freedom Party" activists who challenged the state’s all white delegation to the 1964 convention. Now a school teacher, Cunningham this year was replaced with a man. But this week came word that another woman delegate had offered to let Cunningham go in her place.
Delegates actually have little power. More generally, the Democrats’ longtime fixation on "diversity" among convention delegates is yet another manifestation of appearance over substance. Sadly, this year, the GOP has taken a great leap forward in that direction.
Perhaps Professor Kennedy can set both parties straight.
Evan Gahr is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute.
The American Enterprise Online -
www.TheAmericanEnterprise.org
------
http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom_summer.htm
Freedom Summer Three CORE Members murdered in Mississippi
Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register
blacks to vote during the summer of 1964.
During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights activists,
many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi
and other Southern states to try to end the long-time political
disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although black men
had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the Fifteenth Amendment, for
the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right. White local and
state officials systematically kept blacks from voting through formal methods,
such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear
and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings. The inability to
vote was only one of many problems blacks encountered in the racist society
around them, but the civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter
registration understood its crucial significance as well the white supremacists
did. An African American voting bloc would be able to effect social and political
change.
Freedom Summer marked
the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in the South that had
started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because
of the state's particularly dismal voting-rights record: in 1962 only 6.7
percent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest
percentage in the country. The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a
coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which
was led by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and included the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). By mobilizing volunteer white college
students from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public
relations coup as hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the
country to cover the voter-registration
campaign.
The organization
of the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP) was a major focus of the summer program.
More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a slate
of sixty-eight delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic
City. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of the delegates representing
Mississippi's all white Democratic Party. While the effort failed, it drew
national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of
MFDP delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also lead to a ban on
racially discriminatory delegations at future
conventions.
Freedom Summer officials
also established 30 "Freedom Schools" in towns throughout Mississippi to
address the racial inequalities in Mississippi's educational system.
Mississippi's black schools were invariably poorly funded, and teachers had
to use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history.
Many of the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools,
whose curriculum included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights
Movement, and leadership development in addition to remedial instruction
in reading and arithmetic. The Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least
1000 students that first summer, and ended up with 3000. The schools became
a model for future social programs like Head Start, as well as alternative
educational institutions.
Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment
throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from
local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers'
homes were frequent targets; 37 black churches and 30 black homes and businesses
were firebombed or burned during that summer, and the cases often went unsolved.
More than 1000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80
were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. But the summer's most
infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers,
a black volunteer, James Chaney
* * * * * * * * * *
Copyright © 2001 [CORE- Congress of Racial Equality]. All rights reserved.
----------
http://www.webactive.com/webactive/pacifica/demnow/dn20000229.html
February 29, 2000 on Democracy NOW!
Susie Erenrich, founder and Director of the Cultural Center for Social Change and editor of the new book Freedom is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (Published by Black Belt Press).
Story: FREEDOM IS A CONSTANT STRUGGLE
Nearly 38 years after James Meredith struggled against racism to enter the University of Mississippi, students have elected the school's first black student body president. Nick Lott beat his white opponent by more than 100 votes.
But despite this, the school, which gained notoriety in 1962 when white students rioted against Meredith's registration, is suffering from strained race relations. Black students became the target this month of racist attacks and threats. A brick containing racial epithets was thrown through a dormitory window. After that, a flier about Black History Month was torn down and replaced with a computer-generated graphic with racist images, racial slurs and the confederate flag.
Today is the last day of Black History Month, and we are devoting part of this program to a remarkable chapter in American history: the freedom struggle in Mississippi.
A movie and a book have just come out: the film, "Freedom Song," starring Danny Glover, premiered on Sunday on TNT and it is the story of how the civil rights movement reached a small town in Mississippi.
The book is Freedom is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. It focuses on the critical year of 1964, when civil rights workers were beaten, jailed and murdered, yet freedom schools were established, thousands registered to vote and the Mississippi Freedom Party challenged segregated elections.
The book tells the stories of the participants of the Freedom Summer through songs, articles, photographs and drawings. It has the participation of historical figures of the civil rights movement, as well as its unsung heroes.
Les partis politiques aux Etats-Unis - Political parties in the USA
SUFFRAGE UNIVERSEL - UNIVERSAL
SUFFRAGE
|
