Publisher's Synopsis
In June 1964, over 1,000 volunteers - most of them white, northern college students - arrived in Mississippi to register black voters and to staff "freedom schools" as part of the Freedom Summer campaign organized by the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee. Within 10 days, three of them were murdered; by the summer's end, another had died and hundreds more had suffered bombings, beatings, and arrests. Less dramatically, but no less significantly, the volunteers encountered a liberating exposure to new lifestyles, new political ideologies, and a radically new perspective on America and themselves. That summer saw the forging of crucial links between the Civil Rights Movement and the other social movements that would soon sweep the nation. The author explores the times and attempts to gauge the impact of Freedom Summer on these project volunteers.
