Who Were the White Folks of Freedom Summer?

From SNCC leaders to Freedom School organizers, these are their stories.

By Diamond Sharp, theRoot.com

Marshall Ganz, a SNCC field secretary, also helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. One of the most notable participants in the Freedom Summer movement, he would go on to do organizing work with Cesar Chavez. Ganz has been credited with creating the successful grassroots organizing model that the Obama campaign utilized during the 2008 election. Here he speaks to the Boston Occupy Movement.

It’s well-known that 1964’s Freedom Summer, as it came to be called, was an interracial effort, with many white college students joining African Americans to register voters in Mississippi. It was the murder of three civil rights activists—two of them white—by members of the Ku Klux Klan that sparked national outrage and drew national attention to the struggle for access to the ballot. Ironically, thanks to a racially biased press, it was those murders and the presence of nonblack activists that many believe earned the work the headlines it deserved. From Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leaders to Freedom School organizers, here are some of these activists’ stories…

Click here to read short bios and see photos of these 10 white allies you should know:

 

Heather Booth, SNCC member and, later, founding director of the NAACP National Voter Fund. Considered one of the most notable alums of Freedom Summer, she is currently vice president of USAction.

1. Heather Booth

2. Dr. June Finer

3. Frank Cieciorka

4. Mary King

5. Miriam Cohen Glickman

6. Casey Hayden

7. Howard Zinn

8. Constance Curry

9. Marshall Ganz

10. Mario Savio

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