The Legacy of Freedom Summer

In the summer of 1964, more than 700 primarily white, affluent college students from northern communities descended on Mississippi in a heroic and coordinated effort hatched by Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to join forces with black residents and voter registration activists for the purpose of shaking the white supremacist infrastructure in the state to its core.

Stanley Nelson’s documentary Freedom Summer, about the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, provides an inside look at these events from the perspective of the student volunteers and activists. The film also looks at the formation of a counter-delegation, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, to the all-white Mississippi delegation at the Democratic National Convention that year.

After a recent screening at the Open Society Foundations, a panel discussion explored this moment of incredible alliance and fortitude and its significance today for global freedom movements. Listen above.