In the hot and deadly summer of 1964, over 700 student volunteers joined organizers and local African Americans in Mississippi in an effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in one of the nation’s most segregated states. Together they canvassed for voter registration, created Freedom Schools and established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the all-white state Democratic Party at the national convention.
Featured in the clip are Charlie Cobb, a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Mississippi Delta and a major architect of the Freedom School program, and Dorothy Zellner, a Freedom Summer organizer from New York.
Freedom Summer, directed by Stanley Nelson, premieres on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET on PBS.
