Teaching Guides

Lessons from Freedom Summer: Ordinary People Building Extraordinary Movements

Teaching Guide. Edited by Kathy Emery, Linda Reid Gold and Sylvia Braselmann. Foreword by Howard Zinn. 2008. 456 pages.
Readings and lessons on the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project.

Time Periods: 20th Century, 1961
Themes: Civil Rights Movements, Education, Organizing

lessonsThis collection of readings and suggested questions on Freedom Schools is an almost unimaginable collection of goodies for educators to help students recognize their potential as agents of social change. By offering such a rich array of experience accumulated in the Freedom Schools of the 1964 ‘Mississippi Summer Project,’ accompanied by provocative discussion questions, this book enables middle and high school youth to begin thinking of themselves as making history. Here are profiles of those who participated in that summer that offer models of how leadership can come from anyone who cares enough, not just the famous. By looking at past achievements, all the human connections made in the struggle against racism, and the possibilities ahead, the message comes across: You Are History. —Elizabeth Martinez, SNCC

Lessons from Freedom Summer is a unique resource that details the transformative impact of the Mississippi Freedom Schools of 1964. I believe that the lessons of Freedom Summer will inform a whole new generation of activists who struggle for social justice in their communities today. —Clayborne Carson, Professor of History, Stanford University

ISBN: 9781567513882 | Common Courage Press

More on the Freedom School Curriculum and Freedom Summer online from Education & Democracy.