The Ku Klux Klan was able to kill the civil rights workers and not be prosecuted for a few reasons. One of these is that just about everyone in that town who was white was in on it or knew about it in some way, so it wasn’t really a surprise to anybody. Most of the townspeople were members of the KKK anyway so none of them were going to prosecute themselves and fellow clan members for the murders. Even below all of that were the underlying feelings of hate and racism that many generations of southerners were taught to follow and uphold as if it were the law of the land. It was also apparently very common for police to not only change the law when it came to blacks, but also to be members of the KKK making it even worse for any non-white people who crossed their paths.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s message of nonviolence would be received in mixed ways by African Americans living in Jessop County, Mississippi in 1964. To some, nonviolence would have immense appeal and to others it would seem utterly senseless and that fire should be fought with fire. The message of nonviolence is founded on a basis that fighting back will not only result in even worse retaliation, but that if whites continually beat on blacks and the blacks don’t retaliate, then the blacks end up looking like the better people after all. Other people such as Malcom X thought much differently, and this different thought also had its audience that it appealed to although in the end Kings message turned out to be far more popular. If I were an African American living in Jessop county in 1964, I would probably follow Kings message because peaceful retaliation is far more efficient and less bloody than forceful retaliation would be. This is also helped by the face that local police are defiantly not on the side of African Americans and whites also far outnumber blacks in the county.
Freedom summer was a turning point in the civil rights movement because it showed that blacks were not the only...