"Black feminist thought and practice respond to a fundamental contradiction of U.S. society. On the one hand, democratic promises of individual freedom, equality under the law, and social justice are made to all American citizens. Yet on the other hand, the reality of differential group treatment based on race, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship persists. Groups organized around race, class, and gender in and of themselves are not inherently a problem. However, when African-Americans, poor people, women, and other groups discriminated against see little hope for group-based advancement, this situation constitutes social injustice." Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (2000), page 23

In fact, the group identity, and the awareness of shared history, leads to discussion and organization around shared solutions; by contrast, the rhetoric of color blindness has the negative effect of making the social inequalities themselves invisible, if we are unable to talk about the ways in which different treatment affects groups differently. What we seek in recognizing this history of racial and gender discrimination is understanding of the ways in which both forms are entrenched in American society, and interlocking in their effects. The problems themselves cannot simply disappear, or be wished away, without some difficult examination, without some challenging confrontations with the status quo. In analyzing Freedom Summer, what examples can you find of the activists making these examinations, and encountering challenging situations, that led them to a new perspective, a new understanding?