His great grandfather in fact was a founder of new africa, an all black colony established in the mississippi delta in the 1880s. If you know where to look urk still see a road sign. After his freshman year at howard, he got on a bus to go to a civil rights training meeting in houston, texas. Stopped off in jackson, and basically never left. As dory ladner says, he got gamed. Charlie would work as a snik organizers chiefly in Sunflower County in the delta. He would in 1964 be one of the primary architects of the mississippi summer project, though he was also someone who opposed the project. It was, im sure many of you have seen this document, this was charlie who wrote the prospectus for the freedom schools, schools intended in his words to fill an intellectual and create a vacuum in the lives of young negro mississippianss and so get them to articulate their own demands and questions. Hes remained an activist in the decade first and he has also worked as a journalist for National Public radio and national geographic, for all africa. Com. Ill embarrass him when i say hes probably person on the brown faculty who never went back for a second year of college. He is also the author of a series of book that are quite extraordinary. Radical equations. Civil rights of mississippi. On the road to freedom, a guided tour of the civil rights trail, and last but not least, and i have a flyer, this is the title we all wish we had, this nonviolent stuff will get you killed. How guns made the civil rights possible, a book that is published is in press right now and will appear in a few months with basic, and we have flyers for the book here and so, without further ado, please join me in welcoming and thanking our speakers. [ applause ] good afternoon, everybody. We intend to leave a lot of time for questions or back and forth or dialog, so im going to be brief, and speak in broad strokes. Most often, the 1964 mississippi summer project or the 1964 freedom summer is described as a string of events devoid of context, and this reflects a Larger Movement a larger problem with how the southern freedom mox has been described by historians, so before getting into a few comments about the 1964 summer project, since im in an audience of historians, i would like to comment on one or two complaints. [ laughter ] i have about the history. Not just of the project. But of the movement. One my perspective, of course, is that of participant, active participant, in the Southern Freedom Movement and the Mississippi Movement in particular. So what am i talking about when i say that . Well, ive been a working reporter almost all of my professional life since leaving the state of mississippi in the late 1960s and one of the earliest lessons ive learn thinking about reporting and the way news worked in the United States and the way it worked in the public mind is that it shaped more by whats left out than by any bias that might appear in copy or in broadcasting. One, its easy to spot bias in news or its easy to spot bias at any level. Its a lot harder to make a judgment or reach a real judgment about something if the information you need to reach judgment about it has been left out, and when it comes to the movement, i think the same thing can be said, and it really oversimplify even this. I mean, Martin Luther king, for example, has been reduced in the public mind to an i have a dream speech. Stokely carmichael has really been reduced in the public mind to someone who shouted out black power and thus destroying the Good Movement of love and nonviolence and redemtive suffering. Julian bond, my friend and former snik colleague likes to summarize the movement, rosa stood up, martin sat down, and the white folks saw the light and saved the day. [ laughter ] that in fact an old problem. This is not a 20th century problem or even a Southern CivilRights Movement problem, and in speaking briefly about this problem, i feel compelled to make a reference of a complaint by Fredric Douglas way back in 1855 in his autobiography. What he dpland about is William Lloyd gar i son thought that his intellectual growth weakened their cause. They only wanted him to ordinary rate wrongs, although after escaping slavery, i was is now reading and thinking. However, said john a. Collins general agent of the massachusetts anti slavery society, if he did not have, quote, the plantation manner of speech, people wont ever believe you was a slave. It is best that you not seem too learned. The an bligsist went on to say give us the facts. We will take care of the philosophy. I think this is as relevant today as it is now. What is missing there are a lot of things missing from the history. What is particularly noticeable to me, what is missing and crucial to understanding what took place not just in mississippi in 1964, but across the south is the thinking of movement people. I mean, events, actions, and activities did not just come out of nowhere. They were thought about. They were discussed. They were debated and if you really want to understand what happened in 1964 in mississippi, you have to understand the thinking related to the time and place that people who were struggling against a white supremacist system were engage in. This 1964 summer project did not happen independent of this thought and most importantly this thought came not from the top down by intellect tule elets but bubbled from the bottom up from people who werent ordinarily paid attention to who had ideas about taking on, tackling, and in the final analysis, destroying White Supremacy. So to understand the mississippi summer project of 1964, you have to look from the bottom up and not the top down. You have to wonder what got dory ladner from hattiesburg, mississippi, to jackson state, to snic, to nat ches mississippi. Whats going on in her head . A whole lot of people, ms. Fanny lou hamer. A woman with a sixth grade education, lived all her life on a cotton plantation. Yes, she was heroic, yes, she is bold. What is she thinking about. How can we understand what her thoughts represent in terms of the people of mississippi, particularly the black people . And you have to recognize that the roots of the 1964 mississippi summer project sprout from this grassroots determination to dislodge White Supremacy, something people have been thinking about and wrestling with for offer a hundred years, ever since the betrayal of reconstruction. You know, this thought of tackling White Supremacy existed. We had very briefly, if you talk to people and im talking about 1963, 1962, 1961, mississippi, you know, several problems we were grappling in our thoughts. How do you get the country to Pay Attention to mississippi . Nobody cared about mississippi. How do you get the country to Pay Attention to mississippi . How do you get the federal government to Pay Attention to mississippi . And our answer was at once simple and complex. You bring the countrys children to mississippi. The country will Pay Attention to their children in a way that they wont Pay Attention to either charlie cobb or dory ladnero any of a number of other people that made the Mississippi Movement. More specifically, what do you do about murder . How do you handle that when nobody cares about the people who are being murdered . And what is your responsibility to murder . This is a complicated question. For instance, if people are being killed because they are doing things that you are urging them to do, whats your responsibility to them . And thats both a moral question and an ethical question in the sense of really when it comes down to selfdefense, could you really kill somebody . Thats also a question of responsibility, as i said. What are your obligations to people who are endangered because of doing what you asked them to do . And its also a very practical question. What do you have to do to stay alive . These kinds of thoughts shaped the movement. These kinds of thoughts led us outside the boundaries of mississippi to see where we could find at least partial answers to this, and one partial answer as i said was to bring the countrys children to mississippi, expose them, and thats not as cynical as it may sound. Its a common sense approach to tackling this enormous problem that had been building for centuries. And as it turned out, even though i was opposed to the project, the project was successful. Country paid attention to mississippi. Country was irreversibly changed by what maids, share croppers, cooks, gardeners, small farmers, small entrepreneurs did in mississippi. She the change the National Democratic party enough so that in the 20th century we have barack obama. It forced White Supremacists out of the democrat party, although we have another problem of white supreme asifts in the republican party. It brought a range of social issues to the surface, with respect to to gender issues with respect to to womens rights and large issues that are still unresolved, like education. It forced that issue. I think the project and ill conclude with this and im sure youll have many questions, i think the mississippi summer project, and may be biased or partisan toward mississippi, forced the country to have a conversation about what the country should be, that it was reluctant to have and resistant to having, and at least one remaining question for today is can we have that conversation today . Thank you. [ applause ] thank you, charlie. Youve set the tone for us, and i must say that im very happy that we the late lawrence gee and i persuade you had to stay in mississippi. He was on his way to Houston Texas and stopped at the Freedom Party office in mississippi. He stayed. I would like to say gach to all of you and thank you for being here. Georgia is a place that is special to me in a way. Ill just give you a brief little history. My great great grandfather was born in lawrence county, georgia. My great grandmother married and migrated to mississippi and thats how i came into being and going on down to mississippi, i grew up in a house with a very strong mother whose family was very, very independent. Mother taught us from the age on three on up to not ever bow to anyone, no matter what their color was. She grew up in wayne county, mississippi, from the woolet and gates family and they were independent people who owned their own land and were very selfsufficient. Mother started training us to all look white people in the eye when you talk to them. Never look down. Never look back she used to say, i grew up with them. I fought with them, and just fight them. Dont look back. So i grew up with that it was not a valiant kind of lesson but it was one of independence and i took that to heart. So skipping along, i grew up in Palmers Crossing, mississippi, which is right off highway 49 for those of you know mississippi. Palmers crossing was a small g segregated down with a school and church and everybody knew each other. We had a very large extended family that we drew upon. My grandmother and my mother and her ten brothers and sisters. My father was from pearl river county, and his family moved to california quite early on after my parents divorced. My mother remarried and had six children. So going into my schooling, i attended segregated schools. Never had a new textbook. The school we attended had very poor equipment and the teachers were very devoted to us and we learned and made gains in spite of the surroundings and the things that we had to undergo. Dirt roads, sewer running in the streets. I remember the chemistry lab, the toilet rather in the school, running feces running outside of toilet on to the School Grounds before we got a new scho school. All these things came into play, but my dreaming every day was beyond Palmers Crossing and wanting to know what was beyond Palmers Crossing. Hattiesburg, as you know, had two colleges at that time. We couldnt attend those colleges, but i think it had those colleges had an effect on the the climate of White Supremacy and being close to new orleans also tempered it. The college did not lend itself to the black community. I dont remember participating in anything that the college advocated. The colleges, rather. I will say that i grew up in a community which was an outpost of camp shelby. I dont know if you are familiar with camp shelby, and hattiesburg had a dichotomy of being very religious town and also a very night life kind of place and palmers took on all of it, so most the people sold bootleg liquor, made their livelyhoods off of that. The work was very meenl for the most part if you were a not minister or zool school teacher. The sheriff would come up and down my street sticking his hand out. I grew up with an appreciation of the blues and the music and so forth and i also knew about the liquor being sold and i also knew about the church, and all those ingredients went into my being who i am with the foundation that my mother had given us. Going on to the naacp, mr. Clyde kanard, if you dont know him, kenaard. He attempted to enroll in the university of mississippi. He was sentenced to seven years in the pen tenary. Another one of my mentors was killed years later fighting the ku klux klan when they threw a molotov cocktail at his house and he sustained multiple burns and died from smoke inhalation. We went to naacp meetings in jackson, mississippi, when mr. Daytons sister. I met meg evers a man who communicated with us at the age of 14, he could make me understand that i was living a life that was not fruitful in the sense that segregation had its limitations, meaning we didnt have sidewalks, pafed streets, we couldnt sent down in woolworths, although we go downtown to pay bills and we couldnt stop at the kourn. I remember buying pea nut brittle, and going to segregated toilets. I figured white ladies and colored women. White water fountain and the colored water fountain and after graduating from high school, i went to jackson state, i was president of the dorm council. Was called in after prayer, called into the deans office and wanted to question me about a prayer. I couldnt understand that and coming from Palmers Crossing, where i had not participated in anything political to my knowledge, organizing so forth, the prayer was questioned, so dean gills said, we want to know about this prayer the matron had told him, so i became very adamant, and then was send to the dean of students, dean rogers who had attended harvard and come back and gotten his ph. D. From dwinsity school, and he said im going to him you before i ship you. All of that going into my head, my sister joyce was there as a bystander and i started saying well i dont want to participate here if you dont if you are going to question my prayer. Who are you to question my prayer . I didnt realize all of that. My mother would have been surprised at that. Insulting an elder. Jackson state, the students were going to have a sit in at the library. One of sisters of jackson state drove us to tugalu, that school was founded by the american missionary and the United Church of christ, they had a continuous integration of staff, since the 18 70s. The doctor, we went into the mansion and talked to him, it said if we participated, we will be sent to the pen tenary. We were public state students. Dr. Rider, a white man from Mississippi State said you should have a prayer meeting at jackson state. We took his work for it. We attempted to have a prayer meeting the following week. We gathered around the reflecting pool after the library closed. The president came running out of his house, flailing his arm, knocked my sisters roommate down on the ground and started screaming and we ran to our dorms, and he ordered the girl who had fallen to be sent home that night. She was living in ocean springs, mississippi, on the gulf coast. And the next morning, i saw canine dog on the campus. I didnt know that they had police dogs but to make a long story short, we attempted to march in solidarity with the students in tugalu. I sustain tear gas burns on my head and my back and we were running and the dogs were chasing after us. We ran into the black community, running up and down, and i ran into a ladies house, the lady said come on in baby and washed tear gas off my face and my back. They said come and sit on the porch. The police were running up and count the alley with these dogs and all of us were able to get into a house. Someone told us that white women in that community which live in the adjoining neighborhood let some of the students crawl under their houses to escape from the police. None of us were arrested. None of us had to go to the hospital. We went back to the campus. The president called an early spring break, and school was over. So when we returned, school was out for the summer. And i enroll at tugalu college, into emphasize one thing, when i got back to tugalu i met all of the freedom riders that remained in the mississippi. There were many who decided they were going to stay in mississippi and or beganize and they had been in macomb, mississippi. Working with the students there with bob moses. I was like where have you been . Ive been looking for you all of my life and it was just a good feeling. So tugalu was an Exceptional School in that you could sit on the grass. Boys could come in the dorm. People like pete segar will come on campus, joan baez came on campus, bob dylan came on campus. It was a place for growth and development. We were going to jackson every week and participating with the freedom riders and going to the Freedom House and learning how to do Community Organizing and learning ideas from diane nash and james bell about nonviolence so on and so forth. When school let out this year, i committed myself to the movement. I went home in 62, mother, im going to yak son. Im going to work with bob moses and get my fr