{"id":17784,"date":"2014-08-17T12:52:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T18:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=17784"},"modified":"2014-08-18T04:22:33","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T10:22:33","slug":"fifty-years-after-freedom-summer-civil-rights-volunteers-reflect-on-activist-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/fifty-years-after-freedom-summer-civil-rights-volunteers-reflect-on-activist-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty years after Freedom Summer, civil rights volunteers reflect on activist lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">By DINA WEINSTEIN<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">(JTA) &#8212; At the Freedom Summer anniversary conference in Jackson, Miss., the activists who registered black voters and taught in Freedom Schools under the threat of violence 50 years ago stood up to introduce themselves.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_17785\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a title=\"Temple Panel\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Temple-Panel-1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17785\" class=\"wp-image-17785 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Temple-Panel-1-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"Temple Panel 1\" width=\"300\" height=\"192\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Temple-Panel-1-300x192.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Temple-Panel-1-1024x655.jpg 1024w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/192;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17785\" class=\"wp-image-17785 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Temple-Panel-1-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"Temple Panel 1\" width=\"300\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Temple-Panel-1-300x192.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Temple-Panel-1-1024x655.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-17785\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jewish civil rights volunteers Heather Booth, Mark Levy and Larry Rubin participating in a panel in Jackson, Miss., to mark the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, June 2014. Photo courtesy of Institute of Southern Jewish Life)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">It took three hours to hear what they did in the Magnolia State back in 1964 and have gone on to do in the half-century since.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cAlmost everyone had a social justice connection,\u201d said Heather Booth, who went to Mississippi as a college freshman from New York before moving on to a career as a nationally prominent liberal activist. \u201cThe former volunteers went on to work as teachers, environmental activists and in the field of health care.\u201d<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, Freedom Summer sent mostly white college students to Mississippi to confront the violent racism in the state.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">In the summer of 1964, some 1,500 volunteers worked registering blacks to vote, teaching in Freedom Schools and organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which aimed to challenge the state&#8217;s all-white delegation at the Democratic National Convention that year.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Jews were represented among the young civil rights volunteers in numbers far exceeding their share of the population.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Debra Schultz, the author of \u201cGoing South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement,\u201d said that like other SNCC activists, Jewish Freedom Summer volunteers were motivated by a desire to hold the country to its full promise of democracy. Many were inspired as well by their Jewish and often left-leaning backgrounds.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cAmong particularly \u2018Jewish\u2019 motivations, we can cite: an identification with another racialized people and a passion for racial justice, born of the recent experience with the Holocaust,\u201d Schultz told JTA via email.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_17786\" style=\"width: 205px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a title=\"Heather picketing\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17786\" class=\"wp-image-17786 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"Heather picketing with sign\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign-667x1024.jpg 667w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign.jpg 1191w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 195px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 195\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17786\" class=\"wp-image-17786 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"Heather picketing with sign\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign-667x1024.jpg 667w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Heather-picketing-with-sign.jpg 1191w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-17786\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heather Booth protesting for voting rights in Mississippi during the 1964 Freedom Summer. (Wallace Roberts)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Booth said that she came to Mississippi a year after visiting Israel, where she made a commitment at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial to struggle for justice. Schultz noted that her synagogue had funded the $500 bail money required to participate in Freedom Summer in the case of an arrest.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">The first days of Freedom Summer saw the murder of three civil rights workers &#8212; Jewish New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and black Mississippian James Chaney, who had been investigating the burning of a black church. During the weeks-long search for the workers, the bodies of eight murdered black men were found in the Mississippi countryside before the discovery of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner\u2019s remains.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Tension and danger lurked throughout the summer.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">There were another four people critically wounded, 80 activists beaten, 1,000 arrests, 37 churches and 30 black homes or businesses bombed or burned.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Booth recalls feeling frightened all the time that summer.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cBut it was also very exhilarating,\u201d Booth said. \u201cThere were nightly meetings at black churches, with a lot of singing.\u201d<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">In Shaw, Miss., where blacks were neglected, Booth said she felt honored that her hosts generously gave up their beds for her and three other volunteers.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cIn the black part of town, there were no toilets, no sewers and no street lights,\u201d Booth said.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Booth continued her activism after Freedom Summer. She became involved in the women\u2019s movement, founding Jane, an underground abortion counseling and referral service in Chicago. She went on to serve as the founding director of the NAACP National Voter Fund and Americans for Financial Reform. She also coordinated grassroots efforts to win passage of President Obama\u2019s first budget.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Based in Washington, D.C., she currently consults for and advises a variety of liberal advocacy groups.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">At the anniversary conference in late June, Booth was one of more than 200 former Freedom Summer volunteers in attendance. They met with nearly 2,000 younger activists.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Larry Rubin, a veteran labor movement activist who came to the reunion from Takoma Park, Md., worked on the SNCC staff as a young man from 1961 to 1965, first in southwest Georgia. In early 1964, he went to Mississippi to set up the infrastructure for Freedom Summer.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Rubin said that when he trucked donated books to the Freedom Schools, he was pulled over, roughed up and arrested by police who expressed anti-Semitic sentiments. (But when he came back to Mississippi later as a labor organizer, he recalled, a policeman who had once threatened to kill him if he ever again showed his face in his town praised his efforts to unionize a local business.)<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">When local blacks faced harassment, he said, all the civil rights workers could do was offer to report it to the federal government.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Rubin left the SNCC in 1965 as it was turning toward Black Power and whites were being pushed out of the organization. Rubin recalls feeling a sense of relief, like he was dismissed and could go home.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">He returned to university studies to learn more about his Eastern European Jewish roots, just as the Black Power movement was encouraging African-Americans to embrace their heritage.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Rubin, who grew up in Philadelphia, said his civil rights work was influenced by his parents, who taught him to fight for social justice because of what his grandparents went through fleeing Europe.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">But while many volunteers were Jewish, their backgrounds were not necessarily at the forefront within the movement.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cIn the 1960s we didn\u2019t discuss being Jewish, and we didn\u2019t bring up our motivation for getting involved in the movement,\u201d Rubin said. \u201cThere was no space to discuss Jewishness.\u201d<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Bob Moses, the well-known black civil rights leader and Freedom Summer organizer, told JTA that he was not aware at the time of participants\u2019 Jewish identities.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cI didn&#8217;t know if Freedom Summer people were Jewish,\u201d he said.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">At the anniversary gathering, however, it was a topic of discussion, with a breakout session focused on Jewish participation. Also, concurrent with the reunion, the Goldring\/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life organized events on Jewish involvement in civil rights and social justice activism.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Freedom Summer volunteer Annie Popkin said her family was very aware of discrimination because her father was shut out of Harvard Medical School due to quotas that limited the numbers of Jewish students. At times her family embraced their Jewishness. Other times they turned away from it, seeing it as a painful liability, she said.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">She said she was \u201cso ready to go\u201d south when organizers recruited students like her at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Mass.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Popkin started early in her activism. When she was 12 or 13, Popkin said, her mother took her to a picket line to demand fair housing in her hometown on New York\u2019s Long Island after a black family who moved into the white section had their house burned.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Later, in ninth grade, she and a friend organized pickets of Woolworth\u2019s in New York City in support of sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in the South. Once when she was picketing, Popkin said, a woman shouted at her, \u201cYou&#8217;ll make my husband lose his job, and that&#8217;s not nice of you!\u201d<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cI realized I was not going to be a nice 1950s girl,\u201d Popkin said in a telephone interview from her home in Portland, Ore., where she works as a counselor.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">By the time of her Freedom Summer orientation in Oxford, Ohio,\u00a0Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner had already disappeared. Freedom Summer organizers feared the worst.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">But Popkin remembers feeling optimistic as hundreds of black and white SNCC volunteers locked arms, held hands and sang\u00a0\u201cWe Shall Overcome.\u201d<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cJust imagine if everyone in the country could feel this spirit and see this vision. Wouldn&#8217;t people want to end segregation?\u201d she recalled thinking.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Popkin calls her optimism naive.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cIt was so moving to be part of the embo<\/span>died\u00a0vision of beloved community we were creating in working together, singing together,\u00a0risking our lives\u00a0together,\u00a0believing together,\u201d she said. \u201cWe knew what was right, and we\u00a0spent our days and nights organizing for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">She went to Vicksburg, Miss., where she gathered signatures for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She witnessed the threats and reprisals \u2014 economic and physical \u2014 that kept blacks from attempting to register to vote.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cWe got to see the strong consequences of what we were doing,\u201d Popkin said.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Popkin, who went on to become involved in the women\u2019s movement and teach women\u2019s studies at various universities, pointed to the value of recalling the experiences of rank-and-file civil rights activists like her.<\/span><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><br style=\"color: #222222;\" \/><span style=\"color: #222222;\">\u201cThere\u2019s been a media emphasis on leaders in the civil rights movement and not the individuals who participated,\u201d Popkin said. \u201cAll of our stories can be inspiration. If we could make change at 18, 19, 20, so can others today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Fifty%20years%20after%20Freedom%20Summer%2C%20civil%20rights%20volunteers%20reflect%20on%20activist%20lives\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5881,5882,8790,8795,596,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17784"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17798,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17784\/revisions\/17798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}