Mar. 15, 1964 - The most extensive program of Negro education and political action seen in the South was outlined for Mississippi today by civil rights organizations.
Plans for the program, named the Mississippi Freedom Summer, call for an effort by 2,000 full-time workers, including 1,000 white and Negro college students from both the North and South.
Detailed proposals for the campaign, which is expected to reach into every corner of the state, were approved at a conference of the Council of Federated Organizations in the Masonic Building in Jackson, Miss.
The council has been pressing a voter registration drive in Mississippi since the spring of 1962. It is made up of the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
The Freedom Summer program will be headed by Robert l, a SNCC field secretary, who will be the project director, and David Dennis, a CORE field representative, who will be assistant project director. It provides for the following:
— Freedom schools that will offer intensive instruction in a broad curriculum ranging from remedial reading to political science.
— Community centers that will provide job retraining; instruction in prenatal care, nutrition, and other health problems; recreation facilities; art and craft classes; drama groups; organized sports, and folk festivals.
— A “freedom registration” designed to place 400,000 Negroes on mock voter lists and thus demonstrate their desire to obtain the franchise.
— A “freedom election” to be held during the regular Mississippi Democratic primary on June 2.
— Campaigns supporting two Negro “freedom party” Congressional candidates. The two congressional candidates are the Rev. John Cameron of Hattiesburg in the Fifth District and Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville in the Second.
— Challenges on the floor of the House of Representatives to the right of Mississippi’s delegation to hold seats on the grounds that many Negroes in the state are denied the franchise.
Seven “freedom centers” are recruiting white and Negro college students. The volunteers will be asked to pay the cost of their transportation to and from Mississippi and their expenses, expected to range from $180 to $200, for the summer. Local Negro families will provide housing for them.
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