This is a flyer circulated after the murders of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman in Mississippi. These three young men were members of the Freedom Summer project, which sought to bring white youth activists from the North into the South to collaborate with pre-existing black activists for a voter registration drive. Chaney was black; Schwerner and Goodman were white. While driving to investigate an incident of church burning, they were lynched by the KKK.
This flyer is intriguing because while it was produced in response to a heinous act of violence and contains very violent-appearing imagery, it is urging peaceful action. The rhetoric and images of violence being used to promote a nonviolent form of social change is especially powerful. It speaks to the profound potential of nonviolence as a tool for social change while reminding the viewer vividly of the undertones of violence that could burst forth seemingly at the drop of a hat. The long struggle for civil rights was often fraught with contradicting viewpoints about the proper balance of violent and nonviolent methods of achieving its goals, most tellingly in the split between Robert F. Williams and the NAACP. Next, the flyer champions the voting booth as a means of achieving the American ideals of justice, equality and freedom. This shows that oppressed minorities in American who are excluded from the political sphere still have faith in working within the system to ensure change. This flyer also demonstrates the gritty resilience of members of the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Despite the fact that Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman were murdered in association with a voter registration drive, the leaders of the movement did not allow intimidation and thuggery to derail their plans. Perhaps the KKK’s actions even had the counter-productive effect of encouraging even more African Americans to register to vote in protest as opposed to wiping out the movement.
Link to flyer: http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/FreedomNow/scans/GM0008-01.jpg
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