Useful Links
Background on Freedom Summer
https://americanhistory.si.edu/freedom-summer/background-freedom-summer
Mississippi Freedom Summer
https://www.amistadresource.org/civil_rights_era/mississippi_freedom_summer.html
What Was the 1964 Freedom Summer Project?
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS3707
Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader- By. Michael EdmondsRisking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader documents the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, when SNCC and CORE workers and volunteers arrived in the Deep South to register voters and teach non-violence, and more than 60,000 black Mississippians risked everything to overturn a system that had brutally exploited them.
https://www.amazon.com/Risking-Everything-Freedom-Summer-Reader/dp/0870206788
https://americanhistory.si.edu/freedom-summer/background-freedom-summer
Mississippi Freedom Summer
https://www.amistadresource.org/civil_rights_era/mississippi_freedom_summer.html
What Was the 1964 Freedom Summer Project?
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS3707
Risking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader- By. Michael EdmondsRisking Everything: A Freedom Summer Reader documents the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, when SNCC and CORE workers and volunteers arrived in the Deep South to register voters and teach non-violence, and more than 60,000 black Mississippians risked everything to overturn a system that had brutally exploited them.
https://www.amazon.com/Risking-Everything-Freedom-Summer-Reader/dp/0870206788
Primary Sources
Letters & Reports From Freedom Summer, 1964 Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida-SNCC, CORE, SCLC, COFO, MFDP, DM
https://www.crmvet.org/lets/ms64lets.htm
Freedom Summer A Sourcebook for Teachers and Students
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/pdfs/LIB-A-Freedom-Summer-Sourcebook.pdf
Experiences of the 1964 Freedom Summer Volunteers | Video Gallery
In the summer of 1964, hundreds of predominantly white college students answered the call from civil rights leaders to volunteer for Freedom Summer. They participated in voter registration efforts, taught in freedom schools and worked in community centers in towns throughout racially segregated Mississippi. In this collection of video segments from Iowans Return to Freedom Summer, participants reflect on their experiences during this historic period.
Sensitive: This resource contains material that may be sensitive for some students. Teachers should exercise discretion in evaluating whether this resource is suitable for their class.
https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/dff91049-813b-48a5-8b12-49154e1d7a83/experiences-of-1964-freedom-summer-volunteers/#.WfDgOskpB1M
Classroom Resources
Freedom Summer (1hr 52 min) Mississippi. 1964.
The documentary film from PBS, 'Mississippi, Is This America? 1962-1964,' is an ideal introduction to the topic of Freedom Summer. Its images, interviews, and narrative are simultaneously informative and moving.
Students will see:
Use Guided Questions to Foster Critical Thinking Skills
Instead of suppressing or avoiding these disturbing passages, try to use them as uniquely powerful occasions for students to use their critical thinking skills. Your most useful response in these cases will probably be to validate the student's outrage or emotion, and then turn their intellect back to the text.
Ask questions that connect the historical documents to students' own lives:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/freedomsummer/#part01
The documentary film from PBS, 'Mississippi, Is This America? 1962-1964,' is an ideal introduction to the topic of Freedom Summer. Its images, interviews, and narrative are simultaneously informative and moving.
Students will see:
- A Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker discussing the attitudes of Mississippi's black population, whom SNCC hopes to reach with the voter registration campaign
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking in two environments: in the church and at the end of the Freedom March
- Activists meeting with potential voters
- Mayor Charles Damon decrying integration
- A woman describing how assailants fired into her house, wounding her grandchild
Use Guided Questions to Foster Critical Thinking Skills
Instead of suppressing or avoiding these disturbing passages, try to use them as uniquely powerful occasions for students to use their critical thinking skills. Your most useful response in these cases will probably be to validate the student's outrage or emotion, and then turn their intellect back to the text.
Ask questions that connect the historical documents to students' own lives:
- Why do you think this person (or group) believed what they believed?
- How did this person (or group) get those ideas?
- Who benefited when racism was unquestioned?
- What are some differences between prejudice and belief?
- What are your own biases and preferences?
- How do people change their unconscious assumptions about the world?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/freedomsummer/#part01