Digital Collections

Freedom Summer 1964 Collection

Themes: Civil Rights Movements

1964freedomsummerprojectThe Wisconsin Historical Society features an online collection of more than 100 manuscript collections about the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964.  That equates to approximately 750 folders of relevant documents totaling over 100,000 pages.

More than 25,000 of those pages from the Freedom Summer project manuscripts are available online. In them are official records of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and  Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the personal papers of movement leaders and activists such as Amzie Moore, Mary King and Howard Zinn, letters and diaries of northern college students who went South to volunteer for the summer, newsletters produced in Freedom Schools, racist propaganda, newspaper clippings, pamphlets and brochures, magazine articles, telephone call logs, candid snapshots, internal memos, press releases and much more.

Freedom Summer was the nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi’s segregated political system during 1964. Volunteers were recruited and trained to help Mississippi’s African-American residents register to vote, establish a new political party and learn about history and politics in newly-formed Freedom Schools.

The Wisconsin Historical Society encourages students, teachers, writers, historians, and other researchers to use these resources in 2014 programs marking the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Freedom Summer Project. Feel free to copy them for classroom activities, term papers, displays or exhibits, dramatic presentations, and other nonprofit educational purposes. [Website description.]

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