It was called “Freedom Summer,” and for some civil rights volunteers, it could well have been seen as “danger summer.”
The young volunteers during that summer of 1964 faced constant danger, The Rev. Brooks Smith, a retired pastor at Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church, North Plainfield, told a group of students at Watchung Hills Regional High School during a talk on Friday, Feb. 27.
Three of Smith’s fellow student volunteers were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Two others were kidnapped. And many, including Smith, were arrested.
Smith related his experiences as a volunteer during the 1964 Freedom Summer to English and Social Studies students at Watchung Hills Regional High School. He spoke at the invitation of English teacher Laura Goodson, who said Smith was invited in part to celebrate February as Black History Month, and in part to give a broader context to the subject of this year’s Academy Award-nominated movie, “Selma.“
Selma is about the struggle in the 1960s to help Black Americans in the South register to vote. “Jim Crow” laws had for decades made it virtually impossible for blacks to vote, Smith said, and chronicles the efforts by civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The title refers to the historic march in 1965 from Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River to the Alabama capital, Montgomery, some 50 miles to the east.
Over the weekend of March 7 and 8, President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush joined Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who had marched and was badly beaten in Selma 50 years ago, hundreds of other Members of Congress, elected officials and civil rights leaders, along with thousands of supporters at the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Selma march for voter rights.
Smith said he was arrested for the trumped-up misdemeanor charge of “inciting a riot.” He had been the only white person in attendance of a local church field to view a black youth football practice. Being arrested, even for peaceful nonviolent opposition, was a traumatizing experience, Smith said.
He was held overnight in jail, and charged the next day, even though all he had done was stand and watch a football practice. He posted bail and was released.
Smith recalled how among the provisions he and his fellow volunteers were advised to bring with them for their summer in Mississippi was $500, to be used for bail in the event of being arrested. The student volunteers were also instructed to make out a “Last Will and Testament,” Smith said, in the event that they were killed while volunteering in Mississippi.
“Most of us were scared all the time we were there,” Smith said. “I remember one of the students saying he wore sunglasses all the time because he didn’t want people to see the fear in his eyes.”
Smith made it clear the volunteers did not fear going door-to-door to meet and register new black voters, or being among the black community. On the contrary, the volunteers feared the white opponents who resisted changing Jim Crow laws and practices designed to suppress black voting. Some local blacks in Mississippi became hesitant to be seen with the white student volunteers, fearing reprisals to them and their families by the white opponents.
The whole program had anticipated local opposition to their efforts to help potential new black voters take advantage of the newly approved and historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. The effort was also in anticipation of the equally historic Voting Rights Act, which was approved in August 1965, right after Selma.
Smith, whose wife is the former Watchung Hills Guidance Counselor Gail Smith, said his participation on Freedom Summer led to a lifelong interest in the civil rights movement, and various other movements started in the 1960s.