Category: civil rights
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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.”
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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.
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FIS Library Box 2, Folder ‘Bob Moses’
Two years ago, I met civil rights veteran Jan Hillegas. Since 1965, Hillegas has preserved the history of the Mississippi Movement through the Freedom Information Service (FIS) Library. The FIS Library’s first holdings included materials she rescued from the COFO statewide headquarters in Jackson when the organization dissolved that year.
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“The Forgotten One”: Wayne Yancey
We are the survivors of Mississippi but I knew one who did not come back Not one of the murdered the three young men, two Jewish and one Black but the fourth who died that summer of 1964 in a car accident that may or may not have been an accident He is the forgotten…
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Freedom Summer | Volunteer Phil Lapsansky
When I learned that Mr. Phil Lapsansky transitioned, I remembered seeing his application for the Mississippi Summer Project in the F.I.S. Archive. I thought it would be fitting if I began with his.
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research journal, # 1: Mrs. Garlee Johnson
More than ten years ago, I created this digital space to share my research findings which began with Rachel H. Flowers. It shifted to other scholarly projects, including my research on Flowers’ niece, Geraldine L. Wilson, and now the history of Friends of Children of Mississippi, a grassroots antipoverty organization, established in 1966.
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Personal Musing: 50 Years Later
“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” [Annotated Speech] I stopped my Civil Rights Bus Tour series on Day 5 in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama. So this post jumps to Day 7, our day in Memphis. I only took one picture that day and it was at the National Civil Rights Museum located at the former Lorraine…
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Day 5: Birmingham (PART III)
Just FYI I took this trip back in June. So these posts are simply reflections. Carolyn McKinstry, one of the survivors from the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (1963), signing her book While the World Watched After spending the morning in Montgomery, our group traveled to Birmingham for the afternoon. We had the liberty of exploring…
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Day #5: Montgomery (Part II)
Before I jump into this blog, I want to share a quick story about Phyllis Brown, a woman I met on the course of this trip. Her older sister, Minnijean Brown, was among the nine who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. P. Brown joined us for two days on the…
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Day 5: Montgomery (Part I)
Another heavy day. At the Rosa Parks Memorial Museum, Montgomery Day Five | First Stop- Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) It is strange to call the center’s museum beautiful because of the pain that lies within history. However, the SPLC, aesthetically, is a beautiful museum. On the walls were the names and stories of civil rights martyrs.…
Diary of a Historian 