Freedom Summer

Lewis writes the poem from the perspective of James Chaney. While this might seem at first to be an odd choice, the perspective gives the poem an added sense of tragedy and makes the imagery in the lines more immediate and powerful than if it were written from a retrospective, outside perspective. The use of first person makes the poem more personal, and it allows for an intimate description of the events of Chaney’s last day. Additionally, Lewis focuses on the perspective of the one Black person in the group that was murdered, giving him control of the narrative and highlighting his voice. This is important because Chaney, as a Black man, was made to suffer the most during the attack. Lewis wishes to honor Chaney by letting his perspective guide the poem.

Another interesting choice Lewis makes is the cadence and tone of the poem. He presents the poem in a very non-traditional way, choosing to forgo things like rhyme or set rhythm, and he uses a straightforward, prosaic style that reads almost like a step-by-step recounting of the day from Chaney’s perspective. This helps prevent the romanticization of the event, but it also gives the poem a feeling of dread as the narration builds up to the murders. Early in the poem, for example, Lewis writes:

With

the odor of pee running down my pant leg,

Mickey whispered, Don’t expect that one

phone call, and he was right (Lines 7-10).

Here, Lewis understates the danger the trio is in at this point in the story, and he uses a bit of dark humor to make the scene feel uncomfortable.

Lewis continues this understated narration juxtaposed with dark humor when he writes, “They fed us / potatoes, peas, poke salad, and spoon bread. / Our last supper” (Lines 10-12). The alliteration of the letter “p” almost feels like sarcasm after the previous image of pee running down Chaney’s leg, and the dismissive, almost sarcastic mention of the Last Supper is both tragic and ironic, making it tragically comedic.

The allusion to the Last Supper also aligns these men with the sacrificial image of Christ, making the trio martyrs for a righteous cause. Obviously, this is what they were, but the poem is reinforcing this fact in an understated way. There is no romanticizing, no dramatizing, and nothing to make this feel like a Hollywood production; instead, the story is bleak and real, and because of that, it feels uncomfortable, which is the intention, considering the subject matter is uncomfortable.

However, Lewis uses a much more poetic style once the ambush by the Klan begins. He describes the Klan as being “[a]rmed with cone-hat-con- / viction and long-necked persuaders” (Lines 16-17), mocking the Klan’s costumes while not making light of the terror they bring to the story. The trio feels the “whole / thin shimmer of [their] lives [evaporate] like / smoke in a fog” (Lines 14-16), as the “Klan rode in for last rites for the first rights” of the trio’s bodies (Line 18). Here, Lewis uses a simile and a pun to amplify the tension as the danger escalates from a tense, terrifying undercurrent to a loud, horrifying nightmare.

When the trio faces death, Lewis introduces a moment of doubt and anger from the perspective of Chaney: “Freedom Summer is Forlorn Winter at / the tag end of living” (Lines 23-24). This moment continues the earlier allusion to Christ’s sacrifice, as Jesus also experienced a moment of doubt on the cross when he cried to heaven and asked why God had forsaken him.

But at the end of Chaney’s story, just like at the end of Jesus’s story, this moment of doubt, fear, and anger is cleansed by a return of hope. Chaney says he feels his hand in his pocket still holding onto the penny he called Hope at the beginning of the poem. The image of this penny contains two allusions. First, hope is associated with Christ, so just as Christ’s sacrifice is supposed to lead to hope for mankind, Chaney’s sacrifice carries with it the hope that the movement will live on and lead to change. The second allusion the penny makes is to Abraham Lincoln, another martyr for the cause of justice. Lincoln’s face adorns the penny, so it is only fitting that the penny is the coin Chaney has named Hope. After all, Lincoln is known as the Great Emancipator because of his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, so his image holds a lot of weight in a poem about the martyrs for civil rights in America.

By ending the poem this way, Lewis draws the reader’s focus not to the murder but to the legacy of those who fought for a just movement. His poem is evidence enough that the ideals of the movement lived on beyond these men’s deaths.