Freedom Summer

"If you cared about this country, if you cared about Democracy, then you had to go down." Watch a clip from "Freedom Summer," premiering June 24, 2014.

"I wish to become an active participant rather than a passive onlooker. As my husband and I are in close agreement as to our philosophy in the Civil Rights struggle, I wish to work near him in whatever capacity I may be most useful. My hope is to someday pass on to the children we may have a world containing more respect for the dignity and worth of all men than that world which was willed to us."

Fannie Lou Hamer stood up and challenged the movement. After registering to vote, she and 17 others were arrested, and she had to leave her home and her job. Of "the people of Mississippi, the Negroes," she said, "We are not satisfied and we haven't been satisfied a long time." "Freedom Summer" premieres on American Experience PBS June 24.

"People in the movement were willing to die, but we didn't want to die in obscurity. So if we brought in students, their colleges, their parents would focus on Mississippi." "Freedom Summer" premieres on American Experience PBS on June 24.

Local Mississippi leadership prepared themselves psychologically and militarily for Freedom Summer. The Ku Klux Klan rose up as one that April. Mississippi was on a hair trigger. Watch "Freedom Summer" on American Experience PBS on June 24, 2014.

Fannie Lou Hamer helped fight for better representation among Mississippi Democrats in 1964. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of New York City asked for compromise. He didn't know who Fannie Lou Hamer was. Watch "Freedom Summer" on American Experience PBS on June 24, 2014.

In 1964 Daisy Harris Wade not only took to the picket lines to protest the exclusion of blacks from the voting rolls, she also opened her home to volunteers who came to Mississippi that summer. Born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and the mother of two young sons, Wade was determined to secure the right to vote not only for herself, but for generations to come. "Freedom Summer" June 24

Inspired by the work of Medgar Evers, Dorie Ladner has dedicated much of her life to the work of the civil rights movement. Deeply affected by the murder of Evers as well as the four little girls killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Ladner welcomed the help and the attention that Freedom Summer volunteers brought to Mississippi in 1964.

Over 10 memorable weeks in 1964 known as Freedom Summer, more than 700 student volunteers from around the country joined organizers and local African Americans in a historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in Mississippi, then one of the nation’s most viciously racist, segregated states.

After three civil rights workers went missing in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, Rita Schwerner (the wife of missing Mickey Schwerner) played an important role in getting the press and the nation to pay attention to the case. "Freedom Summer" premieres on American Experience PBS June 24 at 9/8c.

In 1964, a group of civil rights organizations hosted The Mississippi Summer Project, a campaign that would later become known as "Freedom Summer." "It is very important to me that I play my role in civil rights for the U.S. and most of all for myself," wrote one volunteer. "Freedom Summer" premieres on American Experience PBS on June 24 at 9/8c.

A New York City teacher, Bob Moses went to Mississippi and helped organize the largest grassroots civil rights campaign the country had ever seen. "Freedom Summer" premieres on American Experience PBS on June 24 at 9/8c.