Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965

James P. Marshall

LSU Press, Mar 11, 2013 - Political Science - 336 pages

In 1960, Mississippi society still drew a sharp line between its African American and white communities. In the 1890s, the state had created a repressive racial system that ensured white supremacy by legally segregating black residents and removing their basic citizenship and voting rights. Over the ensuing decades, white residents suppressed African Americans who dared challenge that system with an array of violence, terror, and murder. In 1960, students supporting civil rights moved into Mississippi and challenged this repressive racial order by encouraging African Americans to reassert the rights guaranteed them under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The ensuing social upheaval changed the state forever.

In Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi, James P. Marshall, a former civil rights activist, tells the complete story of the quest for civil rights in Mississippi. Using a voluminous array of sources as well as his own memories, Marshall weaves together an astonishing account of student protestors and local activists who risked their lives for equality, standing between southern resistance and federal inaction. Their efforts, and the horrific violence inflicted on them, helped push many non-southerners and the federal government into action, culminating in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act—measures that destroyed legalized segregation and disfranchisement. Ultimately, Marshall contends, student activism in Mississippi helped forge a consensus by reminding the American public of its forgotten promises and by educating the nation that African Americans in the South deserved to live as free and equal citizens.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• 1 The Incipient Movement: 7
• 2 The Decision to Go into Voter Registration: 20
• The Movement Becomes a Local Thing: 27
• 4 Commitment Aborted: 48
• 5 The Stalemated Movement: 56
• 6 The Birth of Protest Politics: 62
• 7 Freedom Summer Part I: 83
• Freedom Schools and Community Centers: 114
• 9 The Political Organization of Protest Politics Part I: 134
• The Second Freedom Vote and the Breakup of COFO: 165
• Conclusions: 199
• Afterword: 209
• The Power of Protection The Federal Government: 211
• Notes on Sources: 219
• Notes: 227
• Bibliography: 261
• Index: 291

About the author

James P. Marshall is an independent scholar and a non-resident fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965
• Author: James P. Marshall
• Contributor: Staughton Lynd
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: LSU Press, 2013
• ISBN: 0807149845, 9780807149843
• Length: 336 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / Civil Rights