Primary Sources: The 1960s: Freedom Summer (1964)

"Access over 40,000 pages of official records of organizations, personal papers of movement leaders, letters, racist propaganda, diaries, images, newsletters and more."

"University of Mississippi's Civil Rights Archive contains digitized versions of small (generally one box or less) collections related to the struggle for civil rights in Mississippi and the American South. Collections date from Reconstruction to the late 20th century. Major topics represented include the Freedmen's Bureau, school integration, voter registration, labor, and religious activism."

"In the summer of 1964, hundreds of predominantly white college students answered the call from civil rights leaders to volunteer for Freedom Summer. They participated in voter registration efforts, taught in freedom schools and worked in community centers in towns throughout racially segregated Mississippi. In this collection of video segments from Iowans Return to Freedom Summer, participants reflect on their experiences during this historic period."

"The collection consists of correspondence, a voter registration plan, photographs, and newsclippings from Thomas Foner's work as a volunteer with the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in 1964. The collection documents his work with the project and contains substantial information about the conditions faced by volunteers during the summer."

"The Freedom Summer Digital Archive began in 2009 with a grant from the Ohio Humanities Council, the Miami University Libraries, and through the generous support of Catherine Ross-Loveland, a 1952 graduate of the Western College for Women. The archive is split into two collections: the Freedom Summer Text & Photo Archive, and the Freedom Summer A/V Collection. Curriculum guides are also available."

"In this recording of Fischer's raw interviews, she speaks with a number of citizens from Mississippi. The audio starts with a recording of a teacher in one of the Freedom Schools set up to help bring a better education to the young black children and black adults in rural areas of Mississippi. Fischer then speaks with Jack Tannehill, editor of the Neshoba Democrat, the weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, MS. Mr. Tannehill talks about the blacks in Mississippi registering to vote..."

"The Freedom Summer Digital Archive began in 2009 with a grant from the Ohio Humanities Council, the Miami University Libraries, and through the generous support of Catherine Ross-Loveland, a 1952 graduate of the Western College for Women. The archive is split into two collections: the Freedom Summer Text & Photo Archive, and the Freedom Summer A/V Collection. Curriculum guides are also available."

"More than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts -- enough to fill several file cabinets -- are available online. In them you will find 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. The digital collection will continue to grow as more manuscripts are added in coming months."

"One of Freedom Summer's strategic objectives was to raise national awareness of southern realities, demand Federal action, and mobilize political support for the MFDP. All the summer volunteers were urged to write frequent letters to family, friends, teachers, and ministers about the Freedom Movement and their experiences. Many volunteers arranged to have their letters published in local newspapers, school or church bulletins, or reproduced and distributed to informal networks. This was before the era of cheap photocopy machines, so letters had to be retyped with carbon copies, or mimeographed from hand-typed stencils, often by parents who just days or weeks earlier had been desperately pleading with their daughters and sons not to to to Mississippi." Civil Rights Movement website

MDAH Digital Archives include:
electronic records received from government agencies and officials; donated and acquired electronic resources; digital copies of original materials from MDAH collections, including paper documents, photographs, maps, audio, and video

"The Mississippi Freedom Project (MFP) is an award-winning archive of 200+ oral history interviews conducted with veterans of the civil rights movement and notable residents of the Mississippi Delta."

Items in the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries' Digital Archive related to the Freedom Schools.

"The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was a coalition of civil rights organizations that formed in Mississippi in 1962 to coordinate voter registration efforts and broader equal rights reforms. In 1964, COFO launched Freedom Summer, in which thousands of local black Mississippians and hundreds of black and white students from out of state operated "Freedom Schools" and registered black voters. Though volunteers faced violent reprisals, their efforts crucially drew the attention of the nation on the obstacles black voters faced in the Deep South, which in turn led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

"From 1964: CBS News Looks inside the Mississippi voter registration effort, with activists teaching volunteers how to respond to police beatings and arrest. Anchored by Walter Cronkite."

Website for radio program that includes interviews.

"A copy of the Security Handbook given to participants in the "Freedom Summer" campaign in Mississippi in 1964 highlights the dangers that young civil rights workers were exposed to. Tragically, the precautions suggested by the handbook proved insufficient; three young volunteers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were abducted and killed by Klansmen within the first weeks of the campaign."

Documents provided by the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website.

"Queens College has several entities that steward distinctive collections. The Queens College Library's Special Collections and Archives is the repository for over 5,000 linear feet of college records, special collections, and rare books, with a specialty in civil rights and activism. The Godwin-Ternbach Museum, a part of the Kupferberg Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, is the only comprehensive collection of art and artifacts in the borough of Queens, housing nearly 6,000 works that date from ancient to modern times. The School of Arts, launched in 2022, is the most comprehensive of its kind in the City University of New York (CUNY), with a mission focused on building the community and diversity of artists, people who work in the business of the arts, and their audiences."

Chude Pam Parker Allen
Holly Springs, Mississippi, July 1964

Designed to make "research quality digital collections of texts, images, and audio materials" available for scholars.