Author: Christina
-
Applying to Post-Docs in History
It has been three years since I’ve received my Ph.D in History. More than a decade ago, I started this blog while an undergrad student (really aging myself) and today I noticed my tagline was still “journey to the Ph.D.”I am now starting my final year of a two-year post-doc. When I started this journey…
-
The Autobiography of Brenda Lavern Travis, c. 1961
I had the honor of meeting Mrs. Brenda Travis in 2023. Ms. Marilyn Lowen called and asked if I could drive Mrs. Travis from Jackson to the Delta for a two-day event commemorating the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer. It was a quick yes! That is how our friendship began, in my car, during a…
-
July 5, 1964 in McComb, MS
On July 5, 1964, dynamite went off at a house on 702 Wall Street in McComb, Mississippi. Four different documents tell a piece of what occurred that night. Civil rights workers used the home as a gathering place for the Movement and conducted voter registration work. Willie May Cotten owned the property and leased it…
-
Freedom Summer Volunteer Profile: Rev. Harry J. Bowie
The above statement serves as the typical description writers use when introducing Rev. Harry J. Bowie (1935-2006). I was immediately interested in writing about Rev. Bowie because he was a Black Episcopal priest who came down to Mississippi, joining the wave of volunteers participating in Freedom Summer. Although a large number of ministers arrived through…
-
“One of the Sleepless Ones:” The Autobiographies of Winson Hudson
The Autobiography of Mrs. Winson Hudson, A Black Woman of Mississippi (an excerpt)—I live in Leake County. I was born here. My father and mother was born here. My husband and I moved to Chicago a year after we were married, neither one of us liked it there. It was not long after we got there that we…
-
New Article: “A Black Girl’s Coming of Age in Jim Crow Philadelphia, Pennsylvania”
In the fall of 1949, seventeen-year-old Geraldine Louise Wilson posed for her senior photograph as a midwinter graduate at Philadelphia High School for Girls, known to her as Girls’ High (see figure below). After four years of study at this prestigious institution, this portrait represented a rite of passage for all soon-to-be graduates of class…
-
So 2025…
A small glimpse into 2025—it was a busy, yet rewarding year. So grateful for the journey and look forward to 2026.
-
She Went to Hopkins Too | Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson
“When I entered orientation for the summer project at Oxford, Ohio, I thought that I already knew about Mississippi. I had read up on the shameful school system and the widespread poverty. I’d seen pictures of Thompson’s Tank and Allan’s Army. I knew about Medgar Evers, Herbert Lee and Lewis Allen.”
-
Natchez, MS Project | Report by Annie Pearl Avery
Civil Rights Project | Oral History of Annie Pearl Avery I met Ms. Annie Pearl Avery last summer in an unusual, hilarious way. Mrs. Brenda Travis and I traveled together from Jackson to Indianola for the 60th commemoration of Freedom Summer. While there, Ms. Avery called sharing that she was lost. She traveled from Alabama…
-
FIS Library | David Llorens, Freedom Summer Volunteer
My research focuses on the Black volunteers who came to Mississippi that long, hot summer of 1964. With my work at the FIS Library, I began processing some of the volunteer applications.
Diary of a Historian 