The biographical consequences of activism - Doug McAdam (1989) - To what extent did Freedom Summer affect the personal and political lives of its participants?

Extract

[...] Therefore, it seems likely that those particular events affected their lives on several aspects. Indeed, the author describes Freedom Summer, and by extent all forms of high-risk activism, as a phenomenon of alternation. Alternation is a concept described by Richard Travisaro, in Social Psychology through symbolic interaction, as "relatively easily accomplished changes of life which are part or grow out of existing programs of behavior", so alternation is an identity change, not as drastic as conversion, as we have seen with Snow and Machalekk's Text, "The convert as a social type", a few weeks ago. [...]

[...] Yet, the fact that no shows choose in the end not to participate in the Freedom Summer because they were afraid for their lives, as the situation in Mississippi was already troubled since May, shows that the importance they gave to their political engagement may have been slightly different than the volunteers. As, besides the will to fight political inequalities there was no other incentive in participating in Freedom Summer for the volunteers. Therefore, the no shows cannot be considered as a legitimate control group. - A second criticism can be addressed about the choice of McAdam to focus on volunteers and not show marital status. The causality between high activism and celibacy or divorce can seem unlikely as divorce or separation can be caused by a multiple of different factors. [...]

[...] To conclude on the short-term political consequences: participants are significantly more politically active and leftist than no shows following Freedom Summer. - Then McAdam focuses on long term consequences, from 1970 until 1983, when he collected his data. He finds that 48% of former volunteers are active in a social movement and are on average part of 2 different political associations, while 33% of no shows are part of a contemporary social movement. He interprets that contemporary activism is linked to 60s activism, because if the subject was already part of a network in the 60s it is easier for him/her to pursue activism today. [...]

[...] However, what is even more striking in Mississippi at that time, is the political enslavement of the Black population. Indeed, because of the registration barrier they constitute less than of Mississippi voters. Most of McAdam's work on social movements focused on Civil Rights movements, and particularly Freedom Summer, which represented high risk or high-cost activism, indeed, the cost to get involved in these movements was high, as activists were aware that their physical integrity could be threatened. Therefore, I will try to answer the following question: To what extent Freedom Summer affected participant's personal and political life? [...]

[...] Throughout his study McAdam compares the impact of Freedom Summer on the 2 groups' personal, professional and political lives. McAdam's conducted a national survey between 1983 and years after the events took place. He first gathered information thanks to archive documents, on the participants of the Freedom Summer such as their university, their prior involvement in social movements or their motive to participate in the movement. Their motivations ranged from: reduce inequalities through education to spread the word of the Gospel but overall, he observed that both volunteers and no shows had similar profiles. [...]