Analysis Of The Film Freedom Summer

In the summer of 1964, hundreds of activists go to Mississippi for 10 weeks to work for the freedom to vote. The documentary Freedom Summer tells this story through photos, archive footage, audio, recent interviews, and music. Each of these are carefully strung together with techniques like Ken Burn style effects and voice-overs to guide the viewer through every event, starting with the harsh racist climate beforehand and eventual concluding with the Voters Rights Act. There are a lot of documentaries out there on this subject, but what separates this from the others is its interviews from the white supremacy side and focusing on events that are often forgotten or untold. Some of the biggest examples of this is include the White Citizens’ Council, female activists getting sexually harassed, the fall of Miss Mississippi, and the Democratic National Convention. The last one was particularly intriguing, because it was such a make or break moment for the movement. The director and editor do a great job emphasizing this with the focus on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The pictures and the footage showed that this powerful movement was working, but Lyndon B. Johnson sabotaged this in fear of lost votes. This final act perfectly show how race and politics are so delicately intertwined. People were systematically denied rights, which people died for, by the political institution because they just happened to have more melanin.