By Charissa Howard
No one outside of its residents had ever really heard of the small Mississippi town before June 1964. That’s when the stories began. Three young men, one of them a Black local and two of them white Northerners, gone missing. A county full of secrets and corruption. A police department mysteriously reluctant to work on the case. Even before the three bodies were eventually found, news outlets had given the town, Philadelphia, Mississippi, a name: “The Other Philadelphia.”
This summer we find ourselves at the 60-year anniversary of some of the most influential few months of the Civil Rights Movement – Freedom Summer. The campaign involved hundreds of volunteers, almost all of them young people, aiming to register African-Americans to vote in Mississippi. They worked closely with local Black leaders who had been hampered for years by corrupt governments and police departments with close ties to the Ku Klux Klan, suppressing the vote through poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, and terror. What better way is there to fight against voter suppression than when young people show up in numbers?
Today, in Philadelphia, PA, my Philadelphia, voting disenfranchisement and racial inequities still walk together hand-in-hand. The work of the Freedom Summer volunteers needs to keep going. That is why, during this summer of 2024, we at VoteThatJawn will be commemorating the anniversary through regular blog posts and suggestions of ways that all of us can carry forward the important work done in the summer of 1964.
Charissa Howard is a student at the University of Pennsylvania studying English and Political Science. She hails from the Philly suburbs and enjoys singing with The Inspiration, her Black a cappella group.
ABOUT Committee of Seventy
The Committee of Seventy is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that has promoted, supported, and facilitated government ethics and election integrity for more than a century. We believe that elections should be more free, more fair, more safe and more secure. We want every eligible voter to vote, to be informed when they vote, and to vote with confidence.
For more information, visit www.seventy.org
ABOUT Vote That Jawn
Using the power of youth voice and connection, #VoteThatJawn aims to bring 18-year-olds and other first-time voters to the polls—beginning a process toward full civic engagement—not just for a charismatic candidate, but to advocate for youth safety, agency, and inclusion.
For more information, visit www.votethatjawn.com
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