Time sensitive: 60 years later, Freedom Summer to be focus of author’s talk in Jackson, Mississippi
Time sensitive: 60 years later, Freedom Summer to be focus of author’s talk in Jackson, Mississippi
Bruce Watson will discuss 1964 voter registration violence on Wednesday, July 24
Mississippi’s civil rights history and its resonance today will be the subject of a noonday “History Is Lunch” talk by author Bruce Watson on Wednesday, July 24, 2024, hosted by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and Museum of Mississippi History.
The hour-long event will take place in the Two Museums’ Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium at 222 North Street in Jackson. It will also be livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook (links at the Archives and History site).
Watson’s book, Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy, chronicles the summer of 1964, when volunteers from across the United States arrived in Mississippi under the supervision of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to help register Black voters as part of a campaign that came to be known as Freedom Summer.
“Seven hundred college students descended on the state to register voters, teach in Freedom Schools, and live in sharecropper shacks,” Watson observed. “But by the time their first night in Mississippi had ended, three volunteers were missing, Black churches had burned, and America had a new definition of freedom.”
A summary of the book notes that through in-depth interviews with participants and residents, Watson captures the legacy of Jim Crow in Mississippi and the chaos that brought such national figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Pete Seeger to the state.
Historian Howard Zinn wrote that Watson’s book, which depicts the life-or-death struggles of Black Mississippians and northern volunteers, “captures, with skill and sensitivity, the drama of that historic summer in Mississippi. He reports the continuous violence, the almost unbearable tension, but also conveys the courage and persistence of black and white volunteers who would remember the experience for the rest of their lives. He does this through personal stories that are poignant and inspiring. This is the best account I have seen of Freedom Summer.”
Watson is the author of six books. Copies of Freedom Summer will be for sale at the program.
Image: From Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (via Bruce Watson)