Thursday, July 31, 2014

Risking Everything: The Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964

1964 was a critical year for the Civil Rights Movement, seeing the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-352) and the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). It was also the year of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, which was a campaign to register African-American voters and support equal rights.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer Project, the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) has launched a new digital collection, which draws upon its substantial archival holdings of civil rights organizations, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), as well as activists, including Amzie Moore, Mary King, and Howard Zinn. The collection contains over 25,000 pages of manuscript material and images, and offers complementary resources for educators.

In addition, WHS Press has published Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader, an anthology of documents from the project. Its editor, Michael Edmonds, is featured in an interview in the video above. To learn more about the Wisconsin Historical Society, visit its website, and peruse its many online collections.

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