I am still working on “Digitizing Freedom Summer,” an interactive digital map that geolocates and profiles each Freedom Summer volunteer. Let me introduce you to Joseph Morse.

Name: Joseph Morse

Hometown: Dakota, Minnesota

Age: 21

Race: White

College/Major: St. Mary’s College, Philosophy (Studying for priesthood at its Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary)

Assigned City in Mississippi: Meridian

Task: Voter Registration

“Many think rights workers are agitators and only causing trouble. But the Negro in Mississippi doesn’t stand a chance alone. The change has to come from the outside. Many Southern whites hate us because we are exposing Mississippi. We feel this exposure is keeping a lot of other trouble from happening.” Joseph Morse to Steve Nagy, “Civil Rights Workers Hope to Put Themselves Out of Business,” Rochester Post-Bulletin, 11 Sept 1964

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Joseph Morse joined the Mississippi Movement that long, hot summer of 1964. His journey began on July 4th as he traveled from Minnesota to the Deep South. COFO assigned Morse to Meridian, Neshoba County, Mississippi, where he conducted voter registration work and volunteered in the local Freedom School. Meridian was the same city Andrew Goodman arrived in the day before he, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney disappeared. Their bodies were later discovered in early August 1964.

Morse felt a moral obligation to join the Movement. As journalists rushed to interview volunteers and learn their motivations, one profiled Morse for the La Crosse Tribune. Morse had learned about segregation and the widespread violence Black Mississippians encountered in their fight for equal rights. Last summer, he hitchhiked across the South to witness firsthand racial injustice from the perspective of locals across the racial line. This experience shaped his decision to act. Morse shared, “We should do something about it. If we have the opportunity we must act. If we can, we have to help in whatever way we can.” His parents supported his decision.

Joining in July, Morse did not attend the week-long orientation in Ohio. Instead, he and other “late arrivals” from Minnesota traveled to Memphis for a four-day orientation where they studied Black history, non-violence, and safety precautions while working in Mississippi. Morse even wrote his parents, warning them about wiretapped phone lines and the state’s surveillance of mail. He later arrived in Meridian, where a local in an editorial for the Meridian Star (July 12, 1964) called the volunteers “beatniks, the wild-eyed left-wing nuts, the unshaven and unwashed trash and the just plain stupid or ignorant or mislead (who) go on meddling and muddling with things about which they know nothing and which concern them not.”

Morse lived with a local family, which newspaper articles largely left unnamed for safety reasons. Local Black Mississippians who opened their homes to civil rights workers risked their jobs, land, and even their lives to house and feed volunteers. Such intimidation and violence made voter registration work difficult. Morse encountered police brutality and even had a bottle thrown through his windshield by a local resident.

In Meridian, about ten percent of the Black population eligible to vote was registered. Morse stated, “Negroes are intimidated just for trying to get their Constitutional rights. We have to convince them that it is their privilege and duty to vote and that we will protect them!”

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Nearly twenty other Minnesotians participated in the Mississippi Summer Project, including:

Mrs. Rose Colwell, 44

Carl Young (Hometown: Honolulu, HI), Carleton College, 22

John M. Strand, Carleton College

John F. AcAuliff Jr. (Noblesville, IN), Carleton College

Deborah Rand (Hometown: Riverdale, NY), 19, Carleton College

Marcia Moore (Fort Dodge, IA), Carleton College

Pamela Parker (Solebury, PA), Carleton College

Marianne McKay (Rosemont, PA), Carleton College

Mrs. Rose Colwell, 44

Eleanor Beth Moore (Roseville, MN), University of Minnesota, 20— “Not going with any rosy idea of saving the world but because I think it is my responsibility to be involved in what’s going on in the world.”

Neil Andrew Eklund, 23, University of Minnesota— “I’m tired of getting second-hand reports of what goes on in Mississippi. I want first-hand information.”

Roger G. Lauen (St. Paul, MN), 25, University of Minnesota

W. Lewis Hyde Jr. (Rochester, New York), University of Minnesota

Sheilah O’Connor (St. Paul, MN), University of Minnesota

Anne Marie Williams (St. Paul, MN), University of Minnesota

William Jacquet (Green Bay, WI), University of Minnesota

Wayne Anderson (St. Cloud, MN), St. John’s University

Joseph Morse (Dakota, MN), St. Mary’s College

“Our goal is to put ourselves out of business.”

-Morse to Steve Nagy, “Civil Rights Workers Hope to Put Themselves Out of Business,” Rochester Post-Bulletin, 11 Sept 1964

Morse remained in Mississippi after that summer’s end alongside 200 other volunteers as COFO expanded its efforts into the fall. By the end of August, police arrested Morse and six others, including Mrs. Fanny Lee Chaney, mother of James Chaney, who the police and white vigilantes murdered earlier that year.