Student Nonviolent Coordinating Association: Case Study

Celeste Tyree was attending college at the University of Michigan when she decided to leave from Ann Arbor and go to Pineyville, Mississippi in the summer of 1964 to help found a Freedom School and a voter registration project as part of Freedom Summer. Freedom Summer was organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. While Celeste is in Mississippi she “learned about the political realities of race and poverty in the town and Celeste also learned truths about herself and her family” (Amazon).

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), often pronounced "snick" (Wikipedia), was a really important organization of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. “It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker

Many unpaid volunteers worked with SNCC on projects in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and Maryland. “SNCC played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years” (Wikipedia). SNCC's major contribution was in its field work, organizing voter registration drives all over the South, especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. I think this book takes place during an important time because in the summer of 1964, Mississippi saw the conviction ex KKK member Edgar Ray Killen for the “1964 abduction and murder” of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. “The men had been working on the Freedom Summer campaign attempting to prepare and register African Americans to vote after they had been disenfranchised since 1890. The disappearance and feared murders of these

She heard activists talking of a nonviolent revolution while she was on campus and the she was determined to go south to help register blacks to vote. Her work in Mississippi was seen as “an attempt to validate her identity as a black woman and to help lift the veil of oppression” (Amazon). Celeste lived on Freshwater Road in Mississippi with Mrs. Owens who helps her learn the ins and outs of Pineyville. With the help of the local black minister Reverend Singleton, Celeste began the Freedom School to teach black history to the children and a voter registration class for the adults. Celeste finds herself in danger as whites and even some blacks are angered by her attempts to gain equal rights for the black citizens draw national attention to the state's brutal oppression of its black-skinned citizens. The house she stayed in with Mrs. Owens was fired into at night. Celeste had to sleep on the floor to avoid bullets that were fired through windows. She also had to step off the sidewalk to let whites pass her. Celeste had to adjust to poor plumbing and humidity in the south. Then she had to deal with the hostility from people due to her project. “The beatings, church burnings, and arbitrary lawlessness of Pineyville's sheriff are true to the historical acts of white racial violence that occurred in Mississippi that summer”