(C) Verite News New Orleans This story was originally published by Verite News New Orleans and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Civil rights icon Matt Suarez recalls the summer of 1964 [1] ['Tammy C. Barney', 'More Tammy C. Barney', 'Verite News'] Date: 2024-03-01 The summer of 1964 in Mississippi was turbulent. Hundreds of college students were recruited by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register Black voters as part of the Mississippi Summer Project. Their good deeds triggered violence. School buildings and the volunteers’ homes were targeted by racist white mobs and police. CORE counted 37 Black churches and 30 Black homes and businesses firebombed or burned. More than 1,000 Black and white volunteers were arrested, about 80 were beaten and others killed. New Orleans civil rights legend Matt “Flukey” Suarez was there. Suarez opened the CORE office in Meridian, Miss., where he trained volunteers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael (Mickey) Schwerner. Later, they were kidnapped and murdered. Suarez asked Chaney to train Schwerner. “There were basic things that needed to be learned,” Suarez said during a 2012 Tulane University panel discussion. “One is that whenever you go into a town, you always know more than one way in and more than one way out. You couldn’t afford to get trapped.” Chaney, who was Black, knew all the back roads and highways. They were training in Ohio, when Chaney, Schwerner and new recruit Goodman returned to Mississippi to investigate a church burning. Two days later, “we got a phone call saying that they were missing,” Suarez said. “Immediately, I knew they were dead.” Their bodies were found buried on a farm six weeks later. Suarez eventually left CORE and became a political campaign organizer, business owner and author. The summer of 1964 still haunted him. “I would wake up in the middle of the night, dripping wet with sweat from fear,” he told an interviewer in 2000. “And I mean, almost paralyzed from fear of stuff that happened … Some things still bother you.” Suarez, 85, lives in New Orleans. Related Stories Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. [END] --- [1] Url: https://veritenews.org/2024/03/01/civil-rights-icon-matt-suarez-recalls-the-summer-of-1964/ Published and (C) by Verite News New Orleans Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 US. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/veritenews/