Transcript protest vote - Blogs @ Suffolk University

“Recruits to Civil Rights Activism”
Doug McAdam
Students for Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
SNCC: Few “Concrete Victories” After Three Years of Work
Reasons for the slow progress:
1) Scale of Resistance in Mississippi
2) Failure of fed govt to apply adequate pressure on the state to
desegregate
3) Failure of SNCC to effective use the media
SNCC Tactics: Protest Vote
Grasping for Straws: Protest Vote in 1963 Gubernatorial Campaign
Allard Lowenstein (a liberal, northern former college administrator)
proposed a “protest vote” to demonstrate blacks desire to vote. With few
alternatives, they opted for the plan.
Protest Vote:
First Step: 1000 vote for Primary in August
Second Step: Protest in Nov. General Election
Slate of “Freedom” candidates:
Aaron Henry, NAACP, Mississippi
Ed King, a white chaplain
Protest Vote: Plan
Need for Volunteers: Lowenstein Pledged to Recruit College Students
Results: 80,000 Blacks Voted in Protest Vote
SNCC Tactics: Freedom Summer
Bob Moses: Extend Project: Bring White College Students down for “Freedom
Summer”
Moses proposed bringing down a larger group of white students at a Nov 1963
SNCC meeting. The idea was fiercely debated.
Freedom Summer: Goals
Goal of Project: Focus on National Attention on Mississippi.
It would also bring law enforcement.
Purpose of Recruitment: Recruit Counter Power-Elite
They recruited from the wealthiest colleges, for students who could afford to
support themselves.
Who Applied for Freedom Summer?
Applicants: A Profile
Applications provided the following on Recruits
1) Applicant background
2) Motives
3) Social networks and relationships
Who Applied for Freedom Summer?
Background Characteristics
They were disproportionately from Ivy League, or flagship state universities.
They also overwhelmingly white: 90% white.
57%: From Elite Colleges
90%: White
41%: Women (at the time, women made up only 39% of
undergraduates nationally)
Who Applied for Freedom Summer?
“Biographical Availability:”
Applicants were available because they were wealthy students who had the
time and money to participate.
Attitudes and Values
The applicants exhibited the ideals characteristic of their social class in the
early 1960s: “they shared in the generalized optimism, idealism and sense of
potency that was the subjective heritage of their class and generation.”
Who Applied for Freedom Summer?
Social Relationships to the Project
Was attitude enough to mobilize people, get them involved? Probably not. It
required instead “concrete social ties [that] served to ‘pull’ people into the
project.
Social Networks:
Applicants were not lone individuals motivated by consciousness. “Rather
their involvement in the project seems to have been mediated through
some combination of personal relationships and/or organizations…”