Research portals below connect to segments of the Mississippi Freedom Project archive, including 100+ oral history interviews that have been conducted during the past 10 years, as well as documentary films, scholar and activist panels, student-produced research discussions, podcasts, and community organizing workshops.
Oral History Interviews at University Digital Collections
The Mississippi Freedom Project research team has conducted over 100 interviews with civil rights veterans and notable residents of the Delta to study the civil rights movement and social organizing in the state. Collected oral histories maintain a unique focus on connecting the lessons of civil rights movement organizing with Mississippi’s current social and political climate.
Browse: Oral history interviews from the Mississippi Freedom Project are available online at the University of Florida Digital Collections. George A. Smathers Libraries sponsored a mini-grant from 2013 – 2014 for the project, which enabled SPOHP to transcribe 100+ interviews for the archive.
“I Never Will Forget” Edited Volume
For more than seven years, the Mississippi Freedom Project research team traveled to Sunflower County, Mississippi to gather interviews with witnesses to history. “I Never Will Forget” (2014) is a collection of these sixty oral history interviews in an edited volume.
I Never Will Forget
- Browse: “I Never Will Forget” (PDF)(2014), now available to the public online. Download and share!
Publication was co-sponsored by UF Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, Center for Undergraduate Research, Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere, Department of History, Milbauer Program in Southern History, African American Studies Program, Phi Alpha Theta chapter, and George A. Smathers Libraries. Smathers Libraries’ mini-grant (see above) also enabled the production of this volume.
Featured on Civil Rights Teaching organization, a project of Teaching for Change, and Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Community Organizing with Lawrence Guyot, 2011
Lawrence Guyot, legendary civil rights activist, SNCC veteran, and organizer for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, gave a community organizing workshop for MFP researchers in 2011.
- Watch “An Organizing Workshop with Lawrence Guyot” on YouTube!
Browse: Community organizing and local history workshops from MFP are available on SPOHP’s YouTube account.
Delta State Panel Video, 2013
SPOHP holds public panels at Delta State University during the annual research trip to focus on community legacies of the civil rights movement in the Delta. The panels invite movement veterans, historians, educators, and area youth to discuss the importance of studying struggles for democracy, as well as the contemporary lessons in civic engagement that can be drawn from organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
On September 19, 2013, SPOHP organized a discussion with Margaret Block, Akinyele Umoja, and Ron Herd II, where each discussed self-protection using violence and other tactics in African American communities during the civil rights movement.
- Watch “Delta State Panel 2013” on YouTube!
Browse: MFP panels and public programs are available on SPOHP’s YouTube account.
Podcast: Education for Empowerment and the Legacy of Mississippi Freedom Schools
“Education for Empowerment: Mississippi Freedom Schools’ Legacy in the 21st Century” examines the continuities between the Mississippi Freedom Schools of 1964 with contemporary educational programs in the Mississippi Delta. This podcast features interviews with Liz Fusco Aaronsohn, statewide director of Freedom Schools, with Justine Moser and Ryan Thomas of Sunflower County Freedom Project, and was created by intern and Women’s Studies graduate student Anna Armitage in 2014.
Browse: Search the SPOHP podcast listing for a full description of student-produced history presentations about the Mississippi Freedom Project and civil rights movement history.
For additional information, contact SPOHP, call the offices at (352) 392-7168, and connect with us online today.