Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register blacks to vote during the summer of 1964. During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states to try to end the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although black men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the Fifteenth Amendment, for …showed first 75 words of 455 total…

…showed last 75 words of 455 total…Chaney from a savage beating. But despite the internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that among other things outlawed the tactics Southern states had used to prevent blacks from voting. The Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action.