Freedom Summer

On August 6, 1964 the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party held a statewide convention to elect 68 delegates to attend the Democratic National Convention later that month. It was Mississippi's first integrated delegation. Watch "Freedom Summer" on American Experience PBS on June 24, 2014.

Freedom Summer of 1964 was marked by sustained and deadly violence, including the notorious murders of three civil rights workers, countless beatings, the burning of thirty-five churches, and the bombing of seventy homes and community centers. Premiers June 24, 2014 on PBS American Experience.

Folk singer Pete Seeger was performing for a Meridian, Mississippi church congregation when he got word that the bodies of missing civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney had been found. American Experience interviewed him about this experience in April 2013. "Freedom Summer" premieres on PBS June 24, 2014.

For 10 weeks during the summer of 1964, over 700 students from the North joined activists on the ground for a massive effort that accomplished what had been impossible so far: force the media and the country to take notice of the shocking violence and massive injustice taking place in Mississippi. Freedom Summer premiers on PBS American Experience on June 24, 2014.

Long before he became a Congressman from Massachusetts, Barney Frank volunteered for the Freedom Summer project in 1964. As a teenager in New Jersey, Frank had been deeply affected by the murder of Emmett Till, and Frank became aware of how ingrained racism was in society. He went to Mississippi because he "couldn't justify not going."

In the summer of 1964, Charles McLaurin led a group of Freedom Summer volunteers in an effort to register voters in rural Mississippi. In 2014, he journeyed back to the small towns he worked in that summer, recounting how infiltrating the small town of Drew, Mississippi landed him and others in a small country jail and the ways in which Fannie Lou Hamer inspired the volunteers.

Julius Lester was teaching guitar and performing as a folk singer in New York City when he decided to go to Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Lester tells of his role in energizing the people gathered at those meetings and setting the stage for the organizers who called the crowds to action. He also reflects on the ever-present danger for participants in Freedom Summer.

John Howell is the publisher of the "The Panolian," the local paper of Panola County, MS. His father was the publisher during Freedom Summer in 1964. Howell reflects on the little coverage given to the events of the civil rights movement, and the publishing of names of those who registered to vote. He also talks about the evolution of the paper and his own views. Freedom Summer premieres June 24.

The first black woman to earn a masters degree in library science from the University of Mississippi, Anita Walton Moore went on to become the head librarian at Rust College, the oldest Historically Black College in Mississippi. There, she has worked to preserve books and documents from 1964's Freedom Summer. "Freedom Summer" premieres June 24, 2014 on American Experience.

Having worked to integrate lunch counters and the public library, Roscoe Jones stood ready to go to work when Freedom Summer volunteers arrived in Meridian, MS. He was at the office for the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), when word arrived that Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner had gone missing. Today, he hopes to preserve buildings in Meridian that tell the story of the movement.

Herbert Randall was a 28-year-old professional photographer when he recruited to go to Hattiesburg, MS to document Freedom Summer. He saw firsthand the danger the Freedom Summer volunteers were in, and felt compelled to share those images with the world. His work is chronicled in a book called "Faces of Freedom Summer". He says there will always be a need for the struggle to be documented.

Upon arrival at Antioch University in 1957, Mark Levy quickly became involved in the civil rights movement, and later at Queens College he met Freedom Summer organizers, who recruited Levy and his wife to head up one of the Freedom Schools in Meridian, MS. Levy's photos of that summer seeded a large collection at Queens College, where he is also committed to sharing the story of Freedom Summer.