{"id":59273,"date":"2014-08-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uris-multicultural-center-celebrates-50th-anniversary-of-freedom-summer-project-in-mississippi\/"},"modified":"2014-08-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T00:00:00","slug":"uris-multicultural-center-celebrates-50th-anniversary-of-freedom-summer-project-in-mississippi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2014\/08\/uris-multicultural-center-celebrates-50th-anniversary-of-freedom-summer-project-in-mississippi\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Multicultural Center celebrates 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer Project in Mississippi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tCivil rights workers from R.I., Mass., N.H. to record experiences in South<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Aug. 20, 2014 \u2013 Half a century ago Providence lawyer Malcolm Farmer was beaten for defending civil rights workers in the segregated South, but it feels like yesterday.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI will never forget it,\u201d says Farmer. \u201cIt had a distinct impact on me. I became much more radical in my beliefs that the system had to change.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nNow Farmer and other civil rights activists from New England will have their stories preserved forever, thanks to the 溏心vlog免费B站. 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Multicultural Center will record interviews with 18 activists to honor the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer Project.<\/p>\n


\nThe project was a nonviolent movement in the summer of 1964 to integrate Mississippi\u2019s political system, which prohibited African Americans from voting.<\/p>\n


\nHundreds of college students from the North traveled to the state to try to register African Americans, create a new political party and establish Freedom Schools to learn about politics. <\/p>\n


\nMany were beaten and threatened by law enforcement officers and angry residents who resented their presence. Three activists \u2013 Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney \u2013 were murdered, their bodies found in a shallow grave outside a small Mississippi town.<\/p>\n

Melvin Wade, the center\u2019s director, came up with the idea for the oral histories as a powerful way to remember Freedom Summer and subsequent years of struggle. The interviews will start at 9 a.m. Sept. 29 at Chafee Hall, Room 217, and continue until they\u2019re finished.<\/p>\n


\nWade credits Freedom Summer with inspiring President Lyndon B. Johnson and Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and with raising awareness about racism and discrimination throughout the country.<\/p>\n


\nThe daylong program, part of 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Diversity Week, will also include talks by civil rights workers, film screenings and question-and-answer sessions. All events are open to the public.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cHaving grown up in Mississippi, I attended the Mississippi Freedom Summer 50th. Conference earlier this year convened by civil rights icon Bob Moses to honor those who fought for the end of militant white supremacy in Mississippi \u2013 a goal which I did not see on the horizon as a college student activist in 1964,\u201d says Wade. \u201cAt the conference, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of Freedom Summer veterans from New England who mentioned that they knew other colleagues.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nWade says he hopes to coordinate the recordings of more civil rights activists from New England over the years, collaborate with activists in building a communications network and establish a digital archive for researchers.

\n\u201cAs I have spoken with the activists, I have learned that the vast majority of them view their participation in the Freedom Summer Project as the most transformative event of their lives, influencing life trajectories up to the present,\u201d Wade says.<\/p>\n


\nThe activists participating in the 溏心vlog免费B站 program agree.<\/p>\n


\nFrom 1965 to 1967, Farmer, then in his mid-20s, worked for the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee, handling hundreds of cases brought against civil rights workers, ranging from obstructing justice to disturbing the peace. Once, a hostile deputy sheriff pointed a shotgun at his head. Another time, he had to curl up to protect himself from deputies kicking him.<\/p>\n


\nThe Yale and Harvard Law School graduate says he learned about \u201ccourage, humanity, evil, racism and justice.\u201d The work, he says, sparked a lifelong commitment to civil rights, including gay rights.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI was blessed to have the opportunity to go through that experience,\u201d says Farmer, a partner with Hinckley, Allen and Snyder. \u201cIt\u2019s an experience I was very, very lucky to have.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other Rhode Islander to be interviewed is Michael S. Van Leesten, who was beaten and hit with pepper spray by Ku Klux Clan members as he tried to register African Americans to vote in 1965. Van Leesten and his colleagues in the Summer Community Organization and Political Education program succeeded in registering 1,000 voters, despite the cruelty.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cI became deeply committed to supporting black progress in this country,\u201d says Van Leesten, founder of The Van Leesten Group, an urban planning and community development company. \u201cI\u2019ve spent my life working to advance human rights.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nOthers to be interviewed are: Gloria J. Clark, occupational therapist and community activist, New Bedford, Mass.; Thomas N. Gardner, professor of communications, Westfield State University, Westfield, Mass.; David A. Gass, community developer and advocate for community gardens, Lynn, Mass.; James G. Kates, poet, literary translator and co-publisher, Zephyr Press, Fitzwilliam, N.H.; James P. Marshall, author of \u201cStudent Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965,\u201d Brookline, Mass.; John M. Pratt, former state representative and town selectman, Walpole, N.H.; David P. Riley, professional mediator, Providence, RI; Gary S. Rothberger, civil rights lawyer, Cambridge, Mass; Nancy J. Schieffelin, artist and clinical social worker, Belmont, Mass; E. Michael Thelwell, professor emeritus, W. E. B. DuBois Department of African American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass.; David Trimble, clinical assistant professor, Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology, Boston University, Brookline, Mass; Bishop Arthur E. Walmsley, former Episcopal staff, Commission on Religion and Race, National Council of Churches, Deering, N.H.; Dan Lynn Watt and Molly Lynn Watt, poets, folksingers and performing artists, Cambridge, Mass.; and Norman S. Zalkind, partner, Zalkind, Duncan and Bernstein, Boston, Mass.<\/p>\n


\nKates went to Mississippi his freshman year at Wesleyan University. The journey changed his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were a generation of people who thought we owed something to our country and world and that it was our responsibility to try to make it a better place,\u201d he says. \u201cThe experience helped me understand what the world was about and how I could work to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nFresh out of Columbia University Law School, Pratt worked for the National Council of Churches, defending clergy and activists. He also recruited and advised other lawyers in the movement. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt made clear to me the deprivations that take place in America for minorities, blacks, women and Hispanics,\u201d says Pratt, commissioner of Cheshire County in New Hampshire and a former state representative. \u201cI\u2019ve devoted a fair part of my adult life to try to remove those disparities.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nSchieffelin, a clinical social worker and painter, worked as a teacher in the Freedom Schools, established in churches and stores to teach people politics, leadership skills and African American history, as well as math and reading.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe experience changed my whole perception about the country and the nature of how people relate to one another,\u201d says Schieffelin, who went to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 when she was a student at Brown University. \u201cI\u2019d never seen that degree of poverty. I\u2019d never seen segregation. All of it seemed so brutal. Going there radicalized me. I was angry and upset and rattled and disturbed by everything. Now, I\u2019m deeply involved in supporting causes related to social justice.\u201d <\/p>\n


\n\tOther events include:<\/p>\n


\n\u2022\tScreening of the film \u201cFreedom Summer\u201d on Sept. 28 from 7 to 10 p.m. at Edwards Hall Auditorium.<\/p>\n


\n\u2022\tScreening of the film \u201cMississippi: Is This America? 1962-1964\u201d on Sept. 29 from 11 a.m. to noon at the Multicultural Center.<\/p>\n


\n\u2022\tTalk by Bruce Watson, journalist and author of \u201cFreedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy,\u201d on Sept. 29 from 1 to 1:50 p.m. at the Multicultural Center.<\/p>\n


\n\u2022\tTalk by Marshall, Freedom Summer participant and author of \u201cStudent Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi: Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965,\u201d on Sept. 29 from 2 to 2:50 p.m. at the Multicultural Center.<\/p>\n


\n\u2022\tConversation with Freedom Summer participants on Sept. 29 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the Memorial Union, Ballroom.<\/p>\n


\nPortrait photos above courtesy of Malcolm Farmer, Melvin Wade and Michael Van Leesten.<\/p>\n


\nPhoto above: Freedom Summer activists sing before leaving training sessions at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, for Mississippi in June 1964. Credit Ted Polumbaum Collection.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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