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As part of Miami University's yearlong Bicentennial Celebration, “Freedom Summer: Unity and Change, Then and Now,” will take place Oct. 9-11 to pay tribute to and explore the impact of historic events of the Freedom Summer Project 45 years ago.
The three-day conference and reunion will host many local and national activists of Freedom Summer, including nationally known scholars and many other freedom fighters from the 1960s civil rights movement. It also will explore the broader meaning of the movement within the context of citizen participation and activism.
To register, go online at http://www.muohio.edu/freedomsummer2009, call 529-8309 or e-mail Dorothy Falke at falkeda@muohio.edu. Registration is $20 before, and $25 at the door. It is free for Miami students, faculty and staff.
In 1964, more than 1,000 volunteers gathered in Oxford, Ohio, at Western College for Women - now a part of Miami’s campus - to receive training for Freedom Summer, an effort to increase voter registration of African Americans in Mississippi who were denied access to the democratic process. For two weeks, participants trained and then traveled to Mississippi to register voters and organize freedom schools.
The event will include pre-conference programs; an exhibit; walking tours of Western College campus; a film series throughout the day Oct. 10; oral history interviews; book sales and signings; and the world premiere of a new play, “Down in Mississippi: A Gospel Play with Music.”
“This conference along with the exhibit and play are part of a series of coordinated efforts to study and learn more about Freedom Summer and its impact on our lives,” said Mary Jane Berman, director of Miami’s Center for American and World Cultures (CAWC) and co-organizer of the event. “Our hope is that more people will become knowledgeable of what happened here and in Mississippi in 1964. Freedom Summer is testimony to young people’s leadership in bringing about positive social change.”
Dates and times for several of the events are as follows:
- Thursday, Oct. 8:
4:30 p.m., 212 Macmillan Hall: “Race and News Coverage from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to Barack Obama” by Charles Cobb, journalist and senior analyst for allAfrica.com
- Friday, Oct. 9:
3-5 p.m., 115 MacMillan Hall: “Who’s Teaching Who?” graduate students meet with civil rights participants
4-8 p.m., 212 Macmillan Hall: “Teaching the Civil Rights Movement” with Wesley Hogan, department of history and philosophy and co-director, Institute of Race Relations, Virginia State University (registration required by Oct.)
8:30 p.m., Freedom Summer Memorial: Candlelight ceremony with Freedom Summer activists J. Charles Jones and Richard Momeyer, professor of philosophy at Miami
- Saturday, Oct. 10:
8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Marcum Conference Center: The Freedom Summer National Conference and Reunion (see www.muohio.edu/freedomsummer2009 for list of events)
- Sunday, Oct. 11:
9 a.m. – noon, Alexander Dining Hall lower level: Freedom readings, music and farewell brunch
- Oct. 1-31:
“Finding Freedom Summer: A Retrospective,” exhibition of items from the Mississippi Freedom Summer Collection on Miami’s Oxford campus at the Western College Memorial Archives.
- Oct. 1-3 and 8-10 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 4 at 3 p.m.:
”Down in Mississippi: A Gospel Play with Music” explores the heart of the civil rights movement as three college students in 1964 gather at Western College for Women before heading into the national spotlight in rural Mississippi. For tickets, call 529-3200 or go to http://www.tickets.muohio.edu.
More than two dozen offices and organizations, on-campus and off, as well as anonymous donors, co-sponsor the Freedom Summer conference.
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