McAdam’s Freedom Summer Analysis

Part I: The transformative Freedom Summer happened in the summer of 1964, with more than 1000 of white volunteers helping the African Americans in Mississippi to register to vote. It was sponsored by organizations including the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which had long-lasting effects on the civil rights movement at the time and later on. In this essay, I will examine the broad historical causes behind the project and the different factors affecting the decisions of the volunteers and no-showers (people who were accepted but did not go).

Looking at the movement from a historical view, it would be hard to neglect the fact that even in the 1960s, Mississippi had the largest black population but still the least registered to vote, which is 7%, compared to the 50-70% in other southern states. It was admittedly a result of the oppression on the African Americans in Mississippi from the white segregationists that kept them away from political involvement which further leads to the poor economics condition of the population. Meantime, for the people who took part in the project, 1960s was also a time of baby booming and the resulting booming economy. “[...] the sheer size and the extraordinary national attention lavished on the postwar generation helped produced a middle- to upper-middle-class youth subculture, uniquely optimistic about the future[...] the economy surged forward at an unprecedented rate.” (McAdam 1988) The youth at the time were perceived as the most culturally and politically centered in the nation, which encouraged them to care for, without worrying about the personal and practical good of themselves such as finding a job, the greater good embodied by political activism (the booming economy also in part contributed to this).

Thus, the liberal activism embedded in the psychology of these young people at the 60s, along with the long struggle for African Americans in Mississippi to move further with their political life, provided the main fuel for the rise of Freedom Summer movement. The three main reasons behind the distinct decisions of the actual participant and the no-showers, according to McAdam (1988), were biographical availability, attitudinal affinity, and one’s social associations to the movement, with the third being the most important. First, based on the application filled out, the volunteers were mainly middle- to upper-middle-class male students with higher education level and optimistic ideals in their 20s who were nearly free of family, marriage, or career concern and less gender-based obstacles. They were biographically more available to commit to their political ideals by actions like volunteering for Freedom Summer. Secondly, these applicants held comparatively more ideal political values which was very likely showed in their past involvement in social activism events. ” [...] some 90 percent of the applicants had already participated in various forms of activism.” (McAdam 1988) The volunteers were, as investigated, not only inspired by the great figures like John Kennedy but also by people in their personal life such as their parents. This interesting finding leads us to the most important factor: “social integration”.

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As said by McAdam, “[...] the volunteers enjoyed much stronger social links to the Summer Project than did the no-shows.” They usually already had intensive past experience involved with civil rights activists’ communities and shared close relationships with people with the similar ideals (McAdam 1988). The combination of these two created a social constraint on individuals from quitting from the project after acceptance. After the project actually proceeded, it was no doubt even harder for these “well-integrated” applicants to withdraw from the action with even strong social links with people in the group. (McAdam 1988)

Part II: Analysis of My Career Goal and Marriage Plan My career goal for now is to work in the finance industry, more specifically, as an investment banker. As mundane as it may sound, it can essentially be explained from three different perspectives: biographical, social structural, and historical effects. As an undergraduate student at Cornell University, I share the same career aspiration with many of my peers. Meantime, it is also their choices that have influenced mine. Being one of the most elite colleges in the U.S., Cornell has students that have worked hard to succeed in the college admission process that has well-established rules for selecting students out of the large applicant pools. Students who have managed to follow these rules, with their individual efforts combined with external resources, have maximize their gains in the process of pursuing a ‘elite’ education.

“Then what’s next?” They ask. According to the essay The School Class as A Social System (Parsons 1959), a school is a social system that socialize its students by allocating them to certain adult roles in the society, with commitment to certain matching social values. Thus, at Cornell, banking has become one most the aspired career options among undergraduate students for the fact that it is often viewed as prestigious, similar to the drive behind the efforts for college admission. The nature of its perception among the students, highly linked to the current U.S. social structure is what I will be discussing in the next part of my essay. But now, when we are focusing on the biographical aspect of my career goal, it is not hard to tell that I am one of this type of students from a well-regarded institution that follows the atmosphere here to simply pursue a prestigious job that seems to pay off for our private school education. This is most evident by a recent analysis from the career site Glassdoor (Moore 2017) showing that the 3 most popular jobs for the overall college graduates in the U.S. are sales associate, research assistant, and teaching assistant.

However, this result is nowhere in line with the most popular postgraduate pursuits of top schools’ graduates. Figure 1: Yang, Andrew, February 4, 2014, “Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America”, HarperCollins Publishers. From the graph above, we can safely conclude that even there is some small distinction, students from these elite schools still have very similar top choices for careers fields to go into right after graduation, with the top 3 being finance, consulting, and law. So, there is no surprise in discovering that my own career interest is the first of the three mentioned with one of my most obvious biographical identity currently as a student at Cornell University, an institution that has finance as the most aspired career fields among students. When we go deeper into the reasons behind the reasons why investment banking, or more broadly, finance, has become a prestigious field for people to rush into, it cannot be denied that its current function in the American social structure shaped by past historical stages is a main driving force. Historically, investment banking begins with the underwriting of securities, which helped promote the industrialization of America and for it further replacing the U.K. as the country that has the strongest economy by 1900.

At the start of the 20th century, it was regulated by laws resulting from the economic crisis in 1929 that commercial banks were excluded from securities issuance underwriting and investment banks were no longer allowed to take deposits from depositors, which marks the start of using the word “investment banks.” After a period of depressed economy from the 1930s to 1950s, it has a rising period especially in the 80s due to the market needs of securitization of almost everything such as the growing demand of mortgage funds. People’s perception of bankers with a glass of whiskey, a cigar, and a special personal charisma largely arose from this time period of the historical stage. The investment banking culture that followed thus come naturally. The attractive salary, the opportunities to work with colleagues from all walks of life, even the business elites of all countries, and the challenge of doing all of this, have attracted more ambitious young students than ever.

After the Subprime Mortgage Crisis in 2008, with the economic rebound, the frenzy of investment banks still persists, which is deeply embodied by the career choice of students from elite colleges. Without doubt, the changing states of investment banks have profoundly reflected the revolution of almost all of the modern enterprises in current American society. They can often be seen as the heart of modern capitalism. “[...] Most commercial nations have found it necessary to institute banks and they have proved to be the happiest engines that ever were invented for advancing trade[...]” Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1781 (Sylla, Richard, and J. Cowen 2018). This argument can be smoothly applied to the role of investment banks in the modern business structure in the U.S. society. Therefore, it is not wonder for those highly-motivated including me students to pursue something in the industry that is often seen as a center of modern capitalism that drives the development of current society. In terms of my future marriage plan, my answer would be another common one from a lot of my peers of my age, which is that I do not want or look forward to getting married any time soon. One fact worth mentioning is that I am raised by a single mother who divorce her husband before I was 3.

To be honest, however, it does not necessarily involve any commonly stereotyped disadvantaging features of single-mom families during my time growing up, since my mother is both mentally and materially sufficient due to her personal efforts to support my development throughout different stages. Hence, it is rather the fact that I am so used to living in a family that has only one parental role and no marriage bonds within that I am talking about significantly shaped my values about family. In the graph below, it is clearly shown that the percent rates of people who grow up with a single mother to be in a marital partnership status is significantly lower than those with both parents in the family. Figure 2: Richter D, Lemola S, 2017, “Growing up with a single mother and life satisfaction in adulthood: A test of mediating and moderating factors” PLoS ONE 12(6): e0179639. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639

One of the often-overlooked reasons, as I stated above, is that these people, including me, are less fervent towards the commitment forced onto from marriage or viewing it as a symbol of status or accomplishment but relatively more aware of the fragile nature of marriage and more and more subtle difference it makes in regards of two people’s commitment to each other including other factors such as individual property. One the other hand, they are more acceptable of being a person without ever being in marriage since their most closed one(parent) has been in this status either for a certain period of time or for most of their life. For some people, including me, it is not even a trauma experience because I do not have any memory of my parents’ conflict before the divorce and ever since I did have a memory it has always been my mom, and no dad insight. The fact that both my mother and I have not had any sensible barriers caused by her marital status or my family structure makes me believe this kind of family structure can still work well and even if my mom had not had me and were never married, she would still have lived well individually. This is so far the most important factor rising from my personal experience that defines my answer regrading not being married.

Mixed with the biographical factor discussed above, historical and social structural factors in a broader context are to be highlighted. According to Andrew J. (2004), even for the existence of marriage itself, it has gone through stages from institutional to companionate, and further into individualized and that child bearing is no longer nested within marriages, which is in line with the biographical factor mentioned above. At this point, marriage from most people are more of a personal decision rather than a social norm that people accustomed to. It is more likely for people to focus on the ‘cohabitation’ aspect (A.J., 2004) of marriage but marriage itself is no longer a necessary means for accomplishing that. Historically, the transformation of role of marriage in the U.S. society is highly associated with the changing norms of gender roles. In the graph below, we can tell that females’ earnings in proportion to males’ have rose significantly over time. In The Second Shift (Hochschild and Machung 1989), the authors argue that marriage and household part has been a “stalled revolution.” Females’ earnings have increased, and women have had a stronger representation in the work force, which has changed the culture regarding “working mom.”

But at the same time, the norms of gender roles within a household has a discrepancy with its counterpart in the work force in the sense that women still do the majority of work like chores at home with their stronger economic status outside. With this in mind, there is no wonder why the idea of getting marriage in today’s culture for women has become a less desired conception than ever. Figure 3: Bowler, Mary, 1999, “Women’s earnings: an overview”, Monthly Labor Review https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1999/12/art2full.pdf In summary, my marriage plan densely related to my biographical history with the recent social trends evolving out of different historical stages that have shaped the U.S. society considerably. It is undoubtfully that uniting the social, personal, and historical scopes of my life in analyzing my career goal and marriage plan has been an effective exercise for the application of the ideas presented in The Sociological Imagination (Mills 1959).

Reference Lists:

1. McAdam, D. 1988. “Freedom Summer. “New York: Oxford University Press. Mills, C. Wright. 1959. “The Sociological Imagination.”
2. New York: Oxford University Press. Sylla, Richard, and David J. Cowen. 2018.
3. “Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt.” Columbia University Press. (www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/syll18456). Cherlin, A. J. 2004.
4. “The deinstitutionalization of American marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family. 66: 848-861. Yang, Andrew. 2014.
5. “Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America”. HarperCollins Publishers. Bowler, Mary. 1999.
6. “Women’s earnings: an overview”. Monthly Labor Review. (https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1999/12/art2full.pdf) Richter D, Lemola S. 2017.
7. “Growing up with a single mother and life satisfaction in adulthood: A test of mediating and moderating factors”.(https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179639) Moore, Emily. 2017.
8. “20 Most Popular Jobs for College Graduates.” (https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/20-most-popular-jobs-for-college-graduates/)

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