People died in order for this generation to be able to vote , and people don ’ t even care about voting .
“ Sue and I were pushed by our parents cause they knew we could do things that they couldn ’ t do ,” Jones said .
He said their families always knew they could encounter reprisals from Jones and Brown ’ s work .
“ They were afraid , but they didn ’ t show it as much ,” Jones said , “ but they were supporting us . They let us know that they were supporting us .”
Brown and Jones said they also found support among Black leaders in the community .
Volunteers arrive
That summer , nearly 1,000 volunteers were scheduled to arrive in Mississippi for Freedom Summer , staying mostly in the homes of Black Meridianites . The project was well known by everyone across the state . Almost 90 % of the volunteers
People died in order for this generation to be able to vote , and people don ’ t even care about voting .
- Sue Brown
who came were white , most in their early 20s and many of them Jewish . About 800 were college students and the other 200 were lawyers , doctors , nurses , ministers , actors and musicians .
Mark Levy and his then-wife , Betty , who has since passed away , were two of those volunteers , recruited from Queens College in New York by Dottie Zellner , a member of SNCC and a recruiter for the Freedom Summer project .
“ Dottie was a couple years older than me , and she was a Queens College person . So I had run into her , actually , on a bus between New York and Boston in the spring ,” he said .
After they talked , Zellner told Levy that he and his wife would make good Freedom Summer volunteers with their desire to help and make a difference .
In June of 1964 , Levy and his wife headed to orientation at Western College for Women in Oxford , Ohio , where all of the Freedom Summer volunteers were being trained for the resistance they would meet in Mississippi . In their first week of training , they learned how to help with voter registration efforts .
Among those helping to train the summer volunteers were the Schwerners and Chaney . Rita Schwerner and another volunteer who was coming to Mississippi to work in Philadelphia , Andrew Goodman , were also students at Queens College .
During the week of training , Schwerner received a call that the Ku Klux Klan had burned Mt . Zion Methodist Church in rural Neshoba County , where he and Chaney had been working , and had beaten several of the church members . Levy said Schwerner and Chaney left Ohio to return to Meridian , taking several volunteers with them , including Goodman , a 20-year-old volunteer who had grown up on the Upper East Side in New York City .
Still in Ohio , Levy and his wife were recruited to switch from voter registration to helping the other Queens College students who were going to run Freedom Schools . They began working with Rita Schwerner to prepare .
Meanwhile , Schwerner and Chaney , along with the other volunteers , arrived back in Meridian on June 20 , 1964 , to check out the church burning . The two men headed to Neshoba County the next day , taking Goodman with them .
Brown , who had been working with the Schwerners since they had arrived in Meridian , asked to accompany the three men , but they told her “ no ” because of the danger . Instead , she and Jones stayed at the seminary getting it ready for use as a school in early July .
When the three men failed to return to Meridian by 3 p . m ., warning bells sounded .
Sounding the alarm “ We had a code . If you weren ’ t back by 3 o ’ clock , alarms sounded and something adverse had taken place , and we were to put into place the emergency plan of contacting the CORE office and any officials that we needed to contact to try and get help to find them ,” Brown said . “ And we had to notify the local people , as many as we could , that the boys had not returned .”
They also had to continue preparing for the coming Freedom Summer volunteers who would be arriving in the coming days , keeping their fears and emotions in check .
“ We had to keep the facade up that everything is going to be all right even though we knew deep down inside it was not okay ,” she said . “ That was all part of doing what was necessary in order to continue to do what we absolutely knew was necessary in keeping the movement alive .”
After news of the disappearance reached Ohio , the CORE and SNCC staff leading the training made the volunteers call their parents to talk it over before fully committing to the www . meridianstar . com
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