Posted 10:13 a.m. Thursday, March 26, 2015
The Freedom Summer exhibit is on display at Murphy Library through April 8.
[caption id="attachment_39834" align="alignright" width="350"]
The Freedom Summer exhibit is at Murphy Library through April 8.[/caption]
Events surrounding the freedom march of 1964 is on display at Murphy Library. The traveling exhibit will close with a presentation featuring a Wisconsin Historical Society historian.
Michael Edmonds will speak on “Risking Everything: The Story of Freedom Summer” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in 150 Murphy Library, UW-L’s Institute for Campus Excellence. An ongoing exhibit on the same topic is on display on the first floor of Murphy Library during regular library hours until Wednesday, April 8. Both the exhibit and the talk are free and open to the public.
Freedom Summer in 1964 was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement when more than 900 northern volunteers, 120 activists, and thousands of Mississippi residents faced Ku Klux Klan firebombs and police shotguns to secure voting rights and challenge segregation.
Edmonds, deputy director of the Library Archives division at the Wisconsin Historical Society, designed the Society’s online archive of 35,000 documents about the summer’s events. He also curated the travelling exhibit and edited a book of eyewitness accounts of Freedom Summer, both of which will be available at the talk. Edmonds will describe how America changed forever during the summer of 1964 and why one of the nation’s premier research collections on civil rights ended up in Wisconsin.
The exhibit and talk bring to light primary sources collected by the Wisconsin Historical Society that provide both firsthand accounts of this grassroots struggle, as well as a broader understanding of the civil rights movement.
“You’ll read their letters, eavesdrop on their meetings, shudder at their suffering, and admire their courage,” says Edmonds. “You’ll witness the final hours of three workers murdered on the project’s first day, hear testimony by black residents who bravely stood up to police torture and Klan firebombs, and watch the liberal establishment betray them.”
Edmonds, a 1976 graduate of Harvard University, earned a master’s degree at Simmons College in 1979 and taught part-time at UW–Madison. The author of several articles and books has won national awards from the American Folklore Society and the American Association for State and Local History.
See more about the exhibit and talk at:http://librarynews.uwlax.edu/freedom-summer/ .
If you go—
What: “Risking Everything: The Story of Freedom Summer”
Who: Traveling exhibit and presentation by historian Michael Edmonds
When: Exhibit available during all library open hours; presentation 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 7
Where: Murphy Library, UW-La Crosse
Admission: Free
The Freedom Summer exhibit is at Murphy Library through April 8.[/caption]
Events surrounding the freedom march of 1964 is on display at Murphy Library. The traveling exhibit will close with a presentation featuring a Wisconsin Historical Society historian.
Michael Edmonds will speak on “Risking Everything: The Story of Freedom Summer” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in 150 Murphy Library, UW-L’s Institute for Campus Excellence. An ongoing exhibit on the same topic is on display on the first floor of Murphy Library during regular library hours until Wednesday, April 8. Both the exhibit and the talk are free and open to the public.
Freedom Summer in 1964 was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement when more than 900 northern volunteers, 120 activists, and thousands of Mississippi residents faced Ku Klux Klan firebombs and police shotguns to secure voting rights and challenge segregation.
Edmonds, deputy director of the Library Archives division at the Wisconsin Historical Society, designed the Society’s online archive of 35,000 documents about the summer’s events. He also curated the travelling exhibit and edited a book of eyewitness accounts of Freedom Summer, both of which will be available at the talk. Edmonds will describe how America changed forever during the summer of 1964 and why one of the nation’s premier research collections on civil rights ended up in Wisconsin.
The exhibit and talk bring to light primary sources collected by the Wisconsin Historical Society that provide both firsthand accounts of this grassroots struggle, as well as a broader understanding of the civil rights movement.
“You’ll read their letters, eavesdrop on their meetings, shudder at their suffering, and admire their courage,” says Edmonds. “You’ll witness the final hours of three workers murdered on the project’s first day, hear testimony by black residents who bravely stood up to police torture and Klan firebombs, and watch the liberal establishment betray them.”
Edmonds, a 1976 graduate of Harvard University, earned a master’s degree at Simmons College in 1979 and taught part-time at UW–Madison. The author of several articles and books has won national awards from the American Folklore Society and the American Association for State and Local History.
See more about the exhibit and talk at:http://librarynews.uwlax.edu/