'Remembering Freedom Summer' conference honors activism, courage

Contact: Leah Barbour

Bottom: The "Remembering Freedom Summer" panel featured participants in the Mississippi voter-registration movement of 1964, including, from left, Dave Dennis, Chude Allen, Mark Levy, Anthony Harris, Doris Derby, Wilbur Colum and Hollis Watkins.

(Photo by Russ Houston)

STARKVILLE, Miss.--Beatings, jail, and/or death were the dangers awaiting visiting volunteers and local residents who participated in the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project, known today as Freedom Summer.

Fifty years after more than 900 volunteers came to the Magnolia State to register African-Americans to vote, Mississippi State University celebrated those activists' courage, as well as the blacks who defied the segregationist power structure in place then.

"Remembering Freedom Summer: Building a Better Future" began Sunday [Oct. 19] with a dinner and scenes from "Freedom High," a play about Freedom Summer. The first full day of panelists, presentations and conversation continued Monday [Oct. 20] in the Bill R. Foster Ballroom at Colvard Student Union, and the commemorative celebration will continue Tuesday [Oct. 21].

Former Gov. William Winter, who served as Mississippi's executive officer 1980-84, emphasized how the people who participated in Freedom Summer laid the groundwork for unity not only in the state but across the entire nation.

"We can compete with the best in this country if we take off these handcuffs of racial segregation, a system that makes us prisoners and enslaves us all," Winter told the more than 200 attendees. "Wherever we are and whatever we're engaged in, we have to do our part to promote racial reconciliation and understanding so we can develop a respect for all of our fellow human beings.

"We're all members of the same race--the human race."

Freedom Summer participants advocated a state and nation that provides equal rights to all human beings, said MSU President Mark E. Keenum. The movement laid the groundwork for MSU to attract and enroll the highest percentage of African-Americans in the Southeastern Conference and among fellow land-grant institutions.

"We cannot get where we're wanting to go without remembering where we've been," Keenum said. "We are indebted to the brave pioneers such as those who are here today. We've come a long way toward truly understanding that diversity empowers and enriches any institution and the individuals within it."

Tougaloo College President Beverly Hogan echoed Keenum. Understanding the past enables the new generation to make a difference in confronting the issues of today.

"When you understand your history, you understand that you can make a difference in your own time," she said. "We're infusing students with idealism and using the platform of education to continue to make this world a better place."

Freedom Summer activist Dave Dennis, also a 1961 Freedom Rider, shared a few of his memories, especially in relation to the decision to follow through with Freedom Summer. After a Jackson church was bombed and a young girl killed, the organizing group concluded the Mississippi Summer Project needed to be held.

"We decided to do it because we were tired of watching people die. I was angry, and I stayed angry for a long time," he said.

Though the Free Southern Theater, begun at Tougaloo College, does not receive as much attention as the Freedom Summer movement, plays about equality featuring local people were performed in the same Mississippi communities where Freedom Schools were established, said founder Doris Derby, also a Freedom Summer activist.

"The live productions gave us--and me in particular--a different view of what it meant to be a strong black man or a strong black woman," said Freedom Summer activist Anthony Harris, professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Former Freedom School teacher Chude Allen, also a Freedom Summer activist, explained how she watched a sense of unity forged among blacks and whites, all advocates for equality.

"We were all there together singing, and we knew some of us might die," she said. "But if we did, others would carry on the struggle, and freedom is a hard, hard struggle."

Participants sang and clapped rhythms along with Freedom Summer activist Hollis Watkins, founder and president of Southern Echo Inc. From "Get on Board for Human Rights" to "Ain't Scared of Nobody Cause I Want My Freedom," he and the crowd sang together to help demonstrate the sense of unity among the Freedom Summer activities.

"It was an exciting time, but it was a dangerous time, and we sang together," Watkins said.

Mark Levy was a Freedom School principal and a Freedom Summer volunteer, but he learned about MSU's historic 1963 Game of Change just two days ago, he said. Dean Colvard, MSU's president then, defied the legislature, the governor and a court order to allow the Bulldogs basketball team to play in the NCAA tournament against the Loyola University team with black players.

"To play a team that had people of color on it--it's courageous for them to have done that," he said. "I don't know that I fully appreciated the impact of Freedom Summer at the time, but the changes made then have laid the groundwork for what we have now."