1964: Freedom Summer

     During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states to try to end the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. 
     Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in the South that started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because of  the state's particularly dismal voting-rights record: In 1962 only 6.7 percent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country.
     Freedom Summer officials established "Freedom Schools" in towns throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in Mississippi's educational system. ... Many of the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools, whose curriculum included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership development in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic. The Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least 1,000 students that first summer and ended up with 3,000.
     Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers' homes were frequent targets; 37 black churches and 30 black home and businesses were firebombed or burned during that summer, and the cases often went unsolved. More than 1,000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. But the summer's most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white co-workers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. ...
     The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that among other things outlawed the tactics that Southern states had used to prevent blacks from voting. Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action.
     -- Excerpted from "Civil Rights: An A-to-Z Reference of the Movement That Changed America" (Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr., editors, 2004)

     -- Photo by Ted Polumbaum (link to his Freedom Summer photos below)

March 20, 1964

     Official announcement of project.

* Press release (Wisconsin Historical Society): @ 

* "Mississippi Awaiting Long, Hot Summer" (Associated Press, May 20): @

June 14

     Volunteer training begins at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio.

* "Ohio College Center For Rights Trainees" (Scripps-Howard, June 18): @
* "Summer Project Readied" (The Student Voice, publication of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, July 2, page 2): @
      -- Photo by Ted Polumbaum; among those training in nonviolent resistance was Andrew Goldman, in dark T-shirt.

June 19

     "A great storm is gathering -- and may break very soon indeed -- in the state of Mississippi and some other regions of the South. ... Before long, moreover, the situation will be enormously complicated -- and envenomed -- by the arrival of several hundred northern white and Negro students recruited to open 'freedom schools' in Mississippi this summer." -- Joseph Alsop 

* "The Gathering Storm in Mississippi" (The Miami News): @

June 20

    First volunteers arrive in Mississippi.

* "They're Coming To Mississippi -- and They're Scared" (Associated Press, June 19): @
* "Race Corps Moving on Mississippi" (Chicago Sun-Times, June 20): @
* "Security Handbook" (Wisconsin Historical Society): @

June 21

     Civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Henry Schwerner disappear. (Separate post: @)
* Summary from Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia (Ferris State University): @

July 2

     President Johnson signs into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Separate post: @)
* Summary (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights): @ 

* "The Civil Rights Act of 1964: What's in it ... How you can use it to obtain the Rights it guarantees" (Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): @

July 2

      First Freedom Schools open.

* "The Freedom Schools: Concept and Organization" (Staughton Lynd, 1964, History Is A Weapon website): @
* "The Freedom Schools, An Informal History" (Lynd, 2004): @
* "Freedom School Curriculum" (Education and Democracy website): @
* "Freedom School Data" (Council of Federated Organizations): @
* "Freedom School Held Under Tree" (New York Times, July 3): @
* "Summer Project: Progress Report I" (The Student Voice, July 15, page 3): @
* "Freedom Schools Mississippi" (The Student Voice, August 5, pages 2-3): @
      -- Photo by Staughton Lynd; outdoor classroom in Indianola.

August 4

     Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner found dead.

* "Bodies of Three Civil Rights Workers Discovered in Mississippi" (Finding Dulcinea): @

August 6
     Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party holds state convention in Jackson. (Separate post on MFDP: @) In Meridian, the Mississippi Freedom School Convention takes place Aug. 6-8.
* "1964 Platform of the Mississippi Freedom School Convention": @

Footnote
     The project did not end with the summer; voter registration efforts continued. Most of the volunteers returned to school, but not all; this is a portion of a letter from Gail Falk, who decided to stay on in Meridian (from "Letters from Mississippi," linked below).
    Whatever small bit we did for Mississippi this summer, Mississippi did ten times as much for us ... Now that I have taught, I know what I want to learn about teaching. Now that I have helped people understand what it means to be a citizen in a democracy, I know things that I still have to understand. Now that I have worked with people to change the society in which they live, I know what I want to learn about societies and how other people have changed theirs ... I guess the thing that pulls me back most are the people who made us a part of their community ... In Mississippi I have felt more love, more sympathy and warmth, more community than I have known in my life. And especially the children pull me back ...
* Falk's website: @
* Entries from Civil Rights Movement Veterans: @ and @

Other resources

General
* "What Was the 1964 Freedom Summer Project?" (Wisconsin Historical Society): @
* "Freedom Summer: 50 Years Later" (Jackson Clarion-Ledger): @
* "Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Exhibit for Students" (Wisconsin Historical Society): @
* "Freedom Summer campaign for African American voting rights in Mississippi, 1964" (Global Nonviolent Action Database): @
* Maps of activities: @ (National Museum of American History) and @ (Keeping History Alive, website of volunteer Patti Miller) 

* Freedom Summer Incident Summary by City or County (University of Southern Mississippi): @
* Mississippi Summer Project: Running Summary of Events (June-August, University of Southern Mississippi): @ 
* Timeline (Wisconsin Historical Society): @

* Freedom Summer 50th (anniversary conference website, Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement): @
* Mississippi Freedom Summer Events (Civil Rights Movement Veterans): @

* Documents from Freedom Summer (Civil Rights Movement Veterans): @
* Mississippi Civil Rights Project (William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation): @

* "Community Organizing I: Freedom Summer" (Jewish Women's Archive): @
* "Let Freedom Ring" (City University of New York curriculum): @
* "Crusade in Mississippi" (Ebony magazine, September 1964): @
* "Voting in Mississippi" (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1965): @

Archives

* Freedom Summer (Civil Rights Digital Library): @

* 1964 Freedom Summer Collection (Wisconsin Historical Society): @

* Images and Documents (Western College Memorial Archives, Miami University of Ohio): @

* Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive (University of Southern Mississippi): @

* Tougaloo College and Brown University: @
* Queens College Civil Rights Archives: @

Personal accounts
* "Freedom Summer Recollections" (Terri Shaw, University of Southern Mississippi Collections): @
* "The Mississippi Summer Project: Holly Springs Participant Reports Nervous Beginnings, Eerie Tension" (Peter Cummings, 1964, The Harvard Crimson): @
* "Three Letters From a Freedom School Teacher" (Civil Rights Movement Veterans): @
* "We Were Not Afraid" (Matthew Zwerling, 2014, Rochester Review): @

* "Last Summer in Mississippi" (Alice Lake, Redbook, November 1964): @
* "Freedom Libraries of the Mississippi Summer Project" (Virginia Steele, Southeastern Libraries, July 1965): @
* Mississippi Freedom Project (oral histories; African American History Project, University of Florida): @
* "A Life for a Vote" (John Hersey, The Saturday Evening Post, September 1964): @
* "Oh Freedom Over Me" (American Radio Works, 2001): @

Photos
* Wisconsin Historical Society: @
* Herbert Randall: @ (University of Southern Mississippi)
* Ted Polumbaum (Newseum): @ 
* Matt Herron and George Ballis (Take Stock): @
* Meridian Freedom School / Patti Miller: @

Videos
* "Freedom Summer" (Stanley Nelson, 2014): @
* "Mississippi: Is This America?" (from "Eyes on the Prize," 1987): @; transcript: @
* "1964: Spotlights" (from NBC): @
* "Freedom Now: The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi" (The Choices Program, Brown University): @ 
* "1964 at 50: Remembering the Mississippi Summer Project" (Organization of American Historians): @

Books
* "Freedom Summer" (Sally Belfrage, 1965): @

* "Freedom Summer" (Doug McAdam, 1988): @

* "Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America A Democracy" (Bruce Watson, 2010): @

* "Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi" (John Dittmer, 1994): @

* "Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi" (James P. Marshall, 2013): @
* "I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle" (Charles M. Payne, 2007): @
* "Letters From Mississippi: Personal reports from civil rights volunteers of the 1964 Freedom Summer" (2002): @
* "The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement" (Bob Zellner, 2011): @
* "The Legacy of a Freedom School" (Sandra E. Adickes, 2005): @ 

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Friday, June 19, 1964: Carol Doda

Carol Doda, a waitress at The Condor nightclub in San Francisco, first dances in a topless bathing suit (designed by Rudi Gernreich). Her fame increases along with her bust size, as she soon goes from a 34B to a 44D through a series of silicone injections. Many other San Francisco bars follow The Condor's lead in offering topless entertainment.

-- 1969 photo from Corbis Images. Caption: "Five years ago, a go-go dancer named Carol Doda descended bare-breasted from a hole in the ceiling of a discotheque called The Condor club. Carol is seen here performing her 'topless dance' to the accompaniment of the rock 'n' roll duo of George 'n' Teddy."

* "The First Monokini: Trying to make the Topless Swimsuit Happen in 1964" (from www.messynessychic.com): @

* "Me? In That!" (Life magazine, July 10, 1964): @

* "The West Passes the Topless Test" (Life magazine, March 11, 1966): @ 
* "Varieties of Topless Experience" (Arthur Berger, San Francisco State College, 1966): @

* "North Beach: Hotbed for the Bizarre / Where Topless Go-Go's and Booming Bands Bustle" (Billboard magazine, May 6, 1967): @

* "Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show" (Rachel Shteir, 2004): @ 
* The Condor summary (from www.mistersf.com): @ 

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Thursday, June 18, 1964: St. Augustine

Shouting "I'm cleaning the pool!", James Brock -- owner of the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida -- pours muriatic (hydrochloric) acid near several people taking part in an effort to integrate the hotel's pool. (The muriatic acid, a cleaning agent used on concrete, was not strong enough to cause any injuries to the demonstrators.)

Police officer Henry Billitz jumps into the pool. Several demonstrators were arrested.

-- Photos by Associated Press 

* "Police Clash With Negroes at Swim-In" (Associated Press): @

* "Negro Efforts Rile Whites" (Associated Press): @

* "Now the Klan is Angry with James Brock" (United Press International, July 26): @

* "Augustine Rife Figure Must Leave" (Associated Press, May 2, 1965): @

* "Remembering a Civil Rights Swim-In" (NPR, June 2014): @

* "Racial and Civil Disorders in St. Augustine" (Report of the Legislative Investigation Committee, state of Florida, February 1965): @

* "St. Augustine Movement 1963-1964" (Civil Rights Movement Veterans): @

* "St. Augustine Movement" (Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University): @ 
* Civil Rights Library of St. Augustine: @ 
* " ' Florida's Birmingham': The Civil Rights Movement in St. Augustine (University of Florida Libraries): @

* "Florida Memory: The Civil Rights Movement in Florida" (Division of Library & Information Services"): @

* "AP photos of 1964 civil rights protests" (spotted.staugustine.com): @ 

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Sunday, June 14, 1964: The Merry Pranksters

Ken Kesey, the author of 1962's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (previous post here), followed it up with the novel "Sometimes a Great Notion." At the time he was living in La Honda, California.

     (Kesey) hosted parties that he referred to as acid tests, due to the participants' generous use of LSD surrounded by blaring music and Day-Glo colors. Surviving the party meant passing the test.
     When publication of "Sometimes a Great Notion" required a trip to New York, Kesey purchased a 1939 International Harvester school bus, gave it a psychedelic painting and stocked it with marijuana and LSD. Accompanied by a group of friends called the Merry Band of Pranksters (aka Merry Pranksters), Kesey took a circuitous route to New York and back. Kesey and his Pranksters punctuated their trip with performances on top of the bus. Kesey's combination of drug use, psychedelic colors, and a communal lifestyle, made all the more notable by his personal fame and flamboyance, helped to establish hallmarks of the hippie culture throughout the decade and into the 1970s.
     -- From "Beat Culture: Lifestyles, Icons, and Impact" (William Lawlor, 2005): @

     Kesey was really trying to go all the way without being exactly sure what that was. He was trying, through the use of LSD and other means, to get everyone in his group completely out of all of the drags and drawbacks of their own past. Free yourself of that and you could head off in some incredible direction. ... The side of Kesey which wasn't duplicated by any other psychedelic group was his attempt to harness all the totally California things -- gadgets, TV, movies, the car, the bus -- harness all of these things and take them beyond their immediate, rather limited use, out to some wild edge.
     -- From "Tom Wolfe on the Search for The Real Me" (New York magazine, August 19, 1968, page 42): @

      -- 1966 photo by Ted Streshinsky. Caption: "A man prepares the Merry Pranksters' bus Further for its drive to the Acid Test Graduation in San Francisco. This psychedelic motoring machine is famous for being driven by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters from California to New York."

* Summary (from University of Virginia Library): @

* "On the Bus: The Complete Guide to the Legendary Trip of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and the Birth of the Counterculture" (Paul Perry and Ken Babbs, 1990): @

* "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (Tom Wolfe, 1968): @

* Book review, New York Times: @

* "Magic Trip" (2011 documentary by Alex Gibney): @

* "Ken Kesey's Magic Trip: Merry Pranksters Redux" (film review, The Guardian): @

* "Mountain Girl and the 'Magic Trip': A Conversation with Carolyn Garcia" (from Jambands.com): @

* Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters (website by Patrick Lundborg): @

* Lundborg's Lysergia website: @
* Website of Kesey's son Zane: @
* "Sometimes a Great Notion" (Kesey, 1964): @

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Thursday-Friday, June 11-12, 1964: Rivonia Trial

Photo from Agence France Presse. Caption: Eight men, among them anti-apartheid leader and African National Congress (ANC) member Nelson Mandela, sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia trial leave the Palace of Justice in Pretoria with their fists raised in defiance through the barred windows of the prison car. The eight men were accused of conspiracy, sabotage and treason. (Note: The AFP website says this photo was taken June 16, but the men had been transferred to Robben Island prison just after the sentencing.)

June 11

     Eight of nine defendants in South Africa's major treason trial were found guilty Thursday. A white defendant was acquitted. Among those convicted were African nationalist leaders Nelson Mandela, known as the "black pimpernel" for his feats in eluding police, and Walter Sisulu. The six Africans, two whites and one Indian had been on trial for several months. They were charged by the white supremist government of assisting in acts of sabotage in 1962 to prepare for guerrilla warfare and an invasion to overthrow the state. -- Associated Press (story: @)

     * "Nelson Mandela Found Guilty" (Australian Associated Press/Reuters): @

June 12

     All the eight men found guilty in the Rivonia Trial were sentenced to life imprisonment today. -- The World (Johannesburg newspaper; front page: @)

* "Rivonia Trial 1963-1964" (from South African History Online): @

* Trial summary (Douglas Linder, University of Missouri-Kansas City): @

* Entries from African National Congress website: @

* "1964: Nelson Mandela jailed for life" (BBC): @

* "Nelson Mandela: Prison Years" (Google Cultural Institute): @

* Summary, www.nelsonmandela.org: @

* Summary, NBC News: @

* "Rivonia: The Story of Accused No. 11" (Bob Hepple; from South African History Online: @ 

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May 1964: Freeze-dried coffee

Maxwell House, a division of General Foods, begins test-marketing Maxim, a freeze-dried coffee, in and around Albany, New York. It would be introduced nationally in 1968.

* "A New Coffee Product" (The Knickerbocker News, May 21, 1964): @

* Advertisement (The Knickerbocker News, June 1964): @

* "Freeze-Dried Process Locks In Flavour" (The Montreal Gazette, May 11, 1968): @

* "Coffee, Instant" (from "The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink," 2007): @

* "History of Instant Coffee" (from www.espressocoffeeguide.com): @

* "Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World" (Mark Pendergrast, 2010): @

* "Is There a Future for Instant Coffee?" (Smithsonian magazine, June 2014): @ 

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Thursday, May 28, 1964: Palestine Liberation Organization

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), umbrella political organization claiming to represent the world's Palestinians -- those Arabs, and their descendants, who lived in mandated Palestine before the creation there of the State of Israel in 1948. It was formed in 1964 to centralize the leadership of various Palestinian groups that previously had operated as clandestine resistance movements.
     -- from Encyclopedia Britannia

* Statement of Proclamation of the Organization and Palestine National Charter of 1964 (from Haaretz): @

* PLO summary (from State of Palestine Mission to the United Nations): @

* PLO summary (from Embassy of the state of Palestine in Malaysia): @

* PLO summary (from Oxford Islamic Studies Online): @
* PLO summary (from Maps of World): @

* "What is the Palestine Liberation Organization?" (from procon.org): @

* Summary of Palestinian National Covenant (from wordvia.com): @

* "The Middle East 1916-2001: A Documentary Record" (The Avalon Project, Yale University): @ 

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1964: Blue-eyed soul

"Blue-eyed soul" refers to soul and R&B music performed and sung by white musicians. The term first came into play during the mid-'60s, when acts like The Righteous Brothers had hits with soulful songs like "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'." Throughout the late '60s, blue-eyed soul thrived, as acts like The Rascals, The Box Tops, Mitch Ryder, Tony Joe White and Roy Head had a series of hits.

     -- From "All Music Guide to Soul" (2003)

Note: Philadelphia DJ Georgie Woods is generally credited with popularizing the term "blue-eyed soul" in 1964, specifically in describing The Righteous Brothers and their hit "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'." That song, released in December 1964, reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in February 1965. (Also in December 1964, The Righteous Brothers released the album "Some Blue-Eyed Soul," though it did not include "Lovin' Feelin'.") 

Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers writes in his memoir "The Time of My Life" that the term dates back a little earlier, to the duo's song "Little Latin Lupe Lu" from 1963. "We were enough of a hit that Atlantic Records, led by the legendary Ahmet Ertegun, picked up the national distribution rights for "Lupe Lu" and that's where the term 'blue-eyed soul' really came from. Atlantic was pretty much an all-black R&B label. When their public relations guy Red Schwartz took us out to promote it on radio stations, we found that most of them were black stations. In those days, radio was really divided like that. Unfortunately, Atlantic forgot to mention that we were white. When we showed up to do interviews, they were stunned. They'd still do the interview, but when we left, they'd quit playing the record. It wasn't a racial thing. It was like 'we play black artists.' ... Of course when 'Lovin' Feelin' came around, they said, 'Screw it, these guys are black. They're black enough.' One DJ in Philadelphia started saying, 'Here's my blue-eyed soul brothers.' In the 1950s and 1960s black guys would use the term 'blue-eye' to refer to a white guy. He was hipping his audience to the fact that we were two white guys. It was like a secret code and it caught on."

* Entry from "All Music Guide to Rock" (2002): @
* Back cover of "Some Blue-Eyed Soul": @
* Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles (Billboard magazine, February 6, 1965): @

* "R&B Stations Open Airplay Gates to 'Blue-Eyed Soulists' " (Billboard, October 9, 1965): @

* "Blue-Eyed Soul Artists Herald Musical Integration on Airways" (Billboard, April 2, 1966): @

* Georgie Woods biography (from The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia): @
* Woods biography (from The Living Legends Foundation): @
* "Joy Ride! The Stars and Stories of Philly's Famous Uptown Theater" (Kimberly C. Roberts, 2013): @
* WDAS history: @ 

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Saturday, May 23, 1964: Solway Spaceman

This famous photograph, taken by British firefighter Jim Templeton of his daughter, purports to show a "spaceman." What it actually shows has been debated ever since.

* Overview from spacemancentral.com: @

* Overview from thinkaboutitdocs.com: @

* "The Mystery of the Solway Spaceman" (BBC News): @

* "The Solway Spaceman photograph" (David Clarke and Andy Roberts, 2012): @ 

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