Juneteenth has been celebrated for over a century in African American communities throughout the United States, particularly in the former antebellum slave states. The holiday represents the liberation of enslaved people in the state of Texas in June 1865. Nearly a century later, the Civil Rights Movement for full equality and self-determination was at its height.
During the Summer of 1964, hundreds of students and their supporters traveled to the State of Mississippi and Southwest Tennessee to demand the recognition of the democratic rights of the African American people to vote and participate in all aspects of civil society. Three Civil Rights workers were killed during the first week of Freedom Summer in Mississippi.
The purpose of the Freedom Summer efforts was to register African Americans to vote and to build an independent Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The MFDP was built by several groups including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), the state NAACP, among many others. The MFDP registered over 80,000 African Americans defying the segregationist laws of the state.
The MFDP took a representative delegation to Atlantic City, New Jersey to challenge the segregationists dominating the Democratic Party in Mississippi. Despite their representative character, the MFDP was denied the right to be seated at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1964. We will examine the lessons from this betrayal and its significance for the developments unfolding during this election year of 2024, some six decades later.
Today youth are on the move in solidarity with the Palestinians at campuses across the United States. They too are being met with intense repression from the local, state and federal authorities.
This video has archived video clips of the period and presentations from cultural workers in Detroit.
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 