The UIC Honors College is proud to present
A Conversation with Veterans of Freedom Summer '64:
How Twenty-Year-Olds Changed America
Monday, November 24th 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Illinois Room, 2nd Floor, Student Center East, 750 S. Halsted Street, UIC
Please register at go.uic.edu/FreedomSummerRSVP.
Co-sponsored by the African American Cultural Center
In the summer of '64, over a thousand Northern young people boarded buses to register African Americans to vote in some of the most violent areas of Mississippi. Just as they were leaving, they heard the news that the young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists James Cheney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman had been "disappeared" and were probably murdered at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. Nevertheless, the "freedom rides" to Mississippi continued. Black sharecroppers and farmers, violating the most sacred racial taboos of the Jim Crow South, opened their homes to these young, mostly white, volunteers. Freedom Summer registered thousands of black voters, organized youth-led legal and medical teams, and launched "Freedom Schools” for teaching about Black history and social activism.
Freedom Summer was one of the most important interracial grass-roots movements for social change and racial justice. Come and hear how they did it, from those who did it.
Dr. Roy DeBerry, Youth Activist in Holy Springs, Mississippi, and student of Freedom School. Educator, former Vice President of Jackson State University, co-founder and Executive Director of Hill County Project, an oral history project that archives civil rights history in Benton County, MS.
Mr. Jim Lewis, Civil rights worker in Southwest Mississippi, 1965-1966, civil rights attorney in Jackson and Oxford, 1966-1973. United States Attorney, Central District of Illinois.
Ms. Aviva Futorian, Freedom School teacher. Field organizer for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Human rights attorney, prison reform activist. Co-founder of Hill County Project.
Dr. Peter Orris, Freedom Summer volunteer and activist. Professor and Director, Occupational Health Service Institute, UIC.
Mr. Hollis Watkins, Lincoln County organizer for Freedom Summer. Participant in first McComb County sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter, for which he was jailed 34 days. First Mississippi student to become involved in the Mississippi Voting Rights Project of SNCC. Lead singer of "freedom songs." Founder of Southern Echo, Inc., Chairman of the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Inc.
Moderated by Dr. Natasha Barnes, Associate Professor of English and African American Studies, and Dr. Johari Jabir, Assistant Professor of African American Studies.
