Freedom Schools / Freedom Summer Poems

While there is very little information available about the origin of these materials, notes in the accession record indicate that the poems may have been created by Civil Rights activists in Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) safehouses in Jackson, MS, during Freedom Summer. Additional, similar materials located at the Mississippi Department of Archivs and History are described as being created at Freedom Schools. We acknowledge the uncertainty by including both Freedom Schools and Freedom Summer in the collection title.

Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a voter registration drive that took place across Mississippi in 1964. The project was organized by groups like the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and COFO. Participants in the project, including several hundred mostly white volunteers from the North East United States, encountered active and violent resistance from the Ku Klux Klan as well as local Mississippi law enforcement. Source: https://snccdigital.org/events/freedom-summer/

Freedom Schools were temporary alternative schools created by and for the Black community after public schools in Southern states closed rather than integrate as required by Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). Freedom Schools in Mississippi were organized in large part during Freedom Summer, in 1964. Source: https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/The-1964-Mississippi-Freedom-Schools