Tag: civil rights
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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…
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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 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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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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Geraldine Wilson’s Commencement Speech at Tougaloo College, 1975 [Part I]
First and foremost, thank you for the 20,000 views on the blog! It may be a small milestone, but still a milestone. I will post an update about graduate life. My favorite photo of Geraldine. Her head is wrapped and the photo showed her in action [probably in the midst of giving a WORD…
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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 