'Foner (Thomas) Freedom Summer papers.' photo (c) 2012, Mississippi Department of Archives and History - license: https://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/

It’s the fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer:

Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi, part of a larger effort by civil rights groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to expand black voting in the South. The Mississippi project was run by the local Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an association of civil rights groups in which sncc was the most active member. About a hundred white college students had helped cofo register voters in November 1963, and several hundred more students were invited in 1964 for Freedom Summer, a much-expanded voter registration project.

On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred arrived. The next day, two of the white students, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both from New York, and a local Afro-American, James Chaney, disappeared. Although their badly beaten bodies were not discovered for six weeks, certainty that they had been murdered swept the country and helped precipitate the passage of a long-pending civil rights bill in Congress

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Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About Freedom Summer (and I’m sure I’ll be adding more during the next couple of months):

Freedom Summer is from the History Channel.

50 Years Ago, Freedom Summer Began By Training For Battle is from NPR.

50 years ago, ‘Freedom Summer’ changed South, US is from the Associated Press.

PBS will be showing a movie titled “Freedom Summer” later this month. The movie’s site has lots of resources.

Here are related teacher resources from the Smithsonian.

Here’s the Freedom Summer segment from “Eyes on the Prize.”

Still Learning From The ‘Pearl Harbor’ Of The Civil Rights Movement is from NPR.

In anniversary ceremony, historic church is center for Freedom Summer lessons is from The Hechinger Report.

People came together 50 summers ago to transform education’s trajectory – let’s finish the job is also from The Hechinger Report.

The Tragic Success of Freedom Summer is from Politico.

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