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Mississippi's past was characterized by a color line that "was drawn in the attitudes and habits of its people, black and white," and was such a part of the society that its "canon of racial exclusion or separation . . . was in substantial part informal" (McMillen 3, 9). Mississippi in the Jim Crow South entrenched a de facto system of segregation so intense that it did not necessitate the same degree of de jure segregation as other Southern states (McMillen 3, 9). Parents and adults in the African American community educated their youth and equipped them with the tools they needed to face a virulently racist Mississippi. The lessons young adults learned were derived from either direct adult prescription or by reacting to what they saw as their elders' compliance with entrenched social mores of white dominated society. Youth took their discontent with Mississippi society to the streets and institutions and infused the 1960s phase of the civil rights movement with their own brand of activism. Otha Burton described this experience as a recognition of "knowing not only who you are but the world you live in. And maybe understanding that world. Understanding that there was a black and white America" (16). This established an awareness of racism in the black community and an increasing intolerance for allowing this separation to exist. Just as children took their lessons about navigating Mississippi society, they also took hold of their parents' and elders' activist involvement as motivating factors that propelled them into the invigorating roles youth played during the movement.
As young people considered their role in the movement, they also sought to define their space and mark their contributions. Many youths viewed the traditional National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) as representing an old guard with different goals. Ella Baker capitalized on this shift in mentality, and in an effort to reinvigorate the movement through youth involvement, she founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") which recruited many young people across the South. Its role in Mississippi was significant. Among SNCC's most substantial organized efforts in the state were in the Freedom Rides and later, Freedom Summer, known colloquially as the Long Hot...