SNCC members Hardy Frye and Howard Jeffries standing next to a Plymouth with a SNCC logo painted by Frank Cieciorka, during the Freedom Summer; the logo was removed after their insurance company told them it was too risky. Holly Springs, Mississippi. June 1964. [504×337]
>Hardy Frye & Howard Jeffries standing next to our project’s Plymouth with the SNCC logo that I had painted on the door. We had decided that we were not going to keep a low profile but rather make it clear who we were & what we were about. After about a week we got the word to get rid of it. The insurance company said it made too inviting a target & unless it was removed they would void our insurance. So we took it off.
>If the presence of a handful of northern whites can restrain Jim Clark in Selma, and if 80 white students can reduce violence in Mississippi for two weeks, what would happen if a thousand northern students, most of them white, came to Mississippi for the entire summer of 1964? In mid-November, the COFO staff meets in Greenville after the Freedom Ballot. They discuss the idea of a summer project involving a large number of northern white students. The debate is long and intense.
>
>Proponents — among them Fannie Lou Hamer, Lawrence Guyot, and CORE’s Dave Dennis — argue that Mississippi’s iron-grip of repression can only be broken by creating a crises which forces the federal government to seriously confront the state. Asking the sons and daughters of white America to join them on the front line of danger might do that. And if nothing else, it would focus national media attention on the realities of Black oppression in the Deep South. As SNCC Chair John Lewis put it: “*Mississippi was deadly, and it was getting worse each day. Our people were essentially being slaughtered down there. If white America would not respond to the deaths of our people, the thinking went, maybe it would react to the deaths of its own children.*” [[2](https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64b.htm#1964b-2)]
>
>Moreover, bringing white supporters to share the dangers of Mississippi will prove to Black communities that they are not alone, that there are people across the country who stand with them. By breaking down the sense of isolation, fear can be reduced and participation encouraged.
>Though I had come to Mississippi from New York, I had not been a civil rights worker from New York, like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who had been murdered in Mississippi at the beginning of the summer by Ku Klux Klan members.
>
>I had not felt that Dick Gregory’s joke about traveling south that summer applied to me. He said he would have gone south then but his Blue Cross had expired. “Then again,” Gregory said, “better it than me!”
>
>But Holly Springs, like much of Mississippi, seemed determined that summer to remain segregated. The owner of the movie theater closed it and announced plans to reopen as a private-membership “recreation club.” The local 12-page weekly put news of African Americans, except for crime news, on page 8, devoted to “News of Interest to Colored Readers.”
>
>The public library removed its tables and chairs and, according to Rust students, transferred all of its good books to a private collection. Marshall County Sheriff J.M. “Flick” Ash and his deputies closely monitored civil rights workers who were trying to register voters, and Sam Coopwood, Holly Springs mayor, city judge, clothing store owner and former police chief, oozed a paternalism perhaps as insidious as intimidation.
Johannes_P
Original found [here](https://www.crmvet.org/images/imgfs.htm).
Description by [Frank Cieciorka](https://www.crmvet.org/vet/cieciork.htm):
>Hardy Frye & Howard Jeffries standing next to our project’s Plymouth with the SNCC logo that I had painted on the door. We had decided that we were not going to keep a low profile but rather make it clear who we were & what we were about. After about a week we got the word to get rid of it. The insurance company said it made too inviting a target & unless it was removed they would void our insurance. So we took it off.
About the [Freedom Summer](https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64b.htm):
>If the presence of a handful of northern whites can restrain Jim Clark in Selma, and if 80 white students can reduce violence in Mississippi for two weeks, what would happen if a thousand northern students, most of them white, came to Mississippi for the entire summer of 1964? In mid-November, the COFO staff meets in Greenville after the Freedom Ballot. They discuss the idea of a summer project involving a large number of northern white students. The debate is long and intense.
>
>Proponents — among them Fannie Lou Hamer, Lawrence Guyot, and CORE’s Dave Dennis — argue that Mississippi’s iron-grip of repression can only be broken by creating a crises which forces the federal government to seriously confront the state. Asking the sons and daughters of white America to join them on the front line of danger might do that. And if nothing else, it would focus national media attention on the realities of Black oppression in the Deep South. As SNCC Chair John Lewis put it: “*Mississippi was deadly, and it was getting worse each day. Our people were essentially being slaughtered down there. If white America would not respond to the deaths of our people, the thinking went, maybe it would react to the deaths of its own children.*” [[2](https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim64b.htm#1964b-2)]
>
>Moreover, bringing white supporters to share the dangers of Mississippi will prove to Black communities that they are not alone, that there are people across the country who stand with them. By breaking down the sense of isolation, fear can be reduced and participation encouraged.
About [Holly Springs](https://www.travelingwithtwain.org/2011/11/28/mississippi/trying-to-pinpoint-a-spy-from-the-freedom-summer-our-visit-to-rust-college-in-holly-springs-ms/):
>Though I had come to Mississippi from New York, I had not been a civil rights worker from New York, like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who had been murdered in Mississippi at the beginning of the summer by Ku Klux Klan members.
>
>I had not felt that Dick Gregory’s joke about traveling south that summer applied to me. He said he would have gone south then but his Blue Cross had expired. “Then again,” Gregory said, “better it than me!”
>
>But Holly Springs, like much of Mississippi, seemed determined that summer to remain segregated. The owner of the movie theater closed it and announced plans to reopen as a private-membership “recreation club.” The local 12-page weekly put news of African Americans, except for crime news, on page 8, devoted to “News of Interest to Colored Readers.”
>
>The public library removed its tables and chairs and, according to Rust students, transferred all of its good books to a private collection. Marshall County Sheriff J.M. “Flick” Ash and his deputies closely monitored civil rights workers who were trying to register voters, and Sam Coopwood, Holly Springs mayor, city judge, clothing store owner and former police chief, oozed a paternalism perhaps as insidious as intimidation.