1964 – Mississippi Freedom Summer Volunteers Begin Training

On May 21, 1964, civil rights organizers gathered to begin training hundreds of volunteers for Mississippi Freedom Summer, a campaign to register African American voters in one of the most violently segregated states in the country. Led by groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), the volunteers—many of them college students—risked their lives to confront systemic racism. Training emphasized nonviolent resistance and prepared volunteers for the hostility they would face. That summer would see dozens of churches burned, civil rights workers arrested, and the infamous murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Yet the campaign led to the registration of thousands of new Black voters and laid the groundwork for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. May 21 marks a turning point in Black history—a coordinated, multiracial effort to dismantle Jim Crow through organized grassroots activism.