Tag: American history
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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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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…
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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 #2: A Conversation w/ Mrs. Elouise Walley
In 1966, Mrs. Elouise Walley began her journey with Friends of Children of Mississippi as a teacher. Little did she know that this journey would span over 30 unforgettable years. Our interview was quite the spectacle.
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Memories of Childhood and My Father | Geraldine Wilson
Memories of Childhood and My Father Hand-in-hand we walked two-and-a-half childhood steps to one Daddy stride my braids bowed pinafore plaid up curb down curb spring water days were fine fun smoothing diamond edge of his anger mean the wide-brimmed gray Stetson snapped over Black Bottom of his white Post Office pain. Growing up under…
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Chef Vincent A. Flowers & Pinemere Camp
A few weeks ago I received the following comment on Roots of a Hidden Legacy: Not a descendent of the Flowers family, but went to Pinemere camp in Stroudsburg, PA in the 1970’s for 8 years. Vincent Flowers was the head chef at camp, and was the most beloved person at Pinemere. I remember we…
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To My Nana, The First Archivist I Knew
For Frances Louise McLean Graham (October 12, 1946 – December 13, 2019) “My first introduction to this field began not in the classroom but in my Nana’s kitchen cutting collards and seasoning catfish. She carried lessons of Black history through food, gossip (her form of historical fact), and stories of her upbringing in rural North…
Diary of a Historian 