What happened during the Mississippi Freedom Summer?
Young black folks were the organizers, and there were three prongs to their idea: Freedom Schools to help kids of color understand their history and culture, voter registration drives and community centers. It was really questionable as to whether or not they were going to encourage whites to participate in this massive effort at voter registration. They made the decision to bring whites in because they felt that until and unless Northern whites truly understood what was going on in the South, they couldn’t expect substantial change. There’s something to be said for reaching out to people who wouldn’t necessarily care about injustice until it touches their lives directly. Exactly. That’s where we get to reparations. When will we ever acknowledge what we did in Vietnam? Ask how many people died in Vietnam and people will go “Uh, 58,000.” Americans. How many people died? Several million. And children are still being born with brains outside their skulls because of what we did there. Was
