Freedom Summer 1964 Memorial
Western College DriveOxford, OH 45056
513-529-1809 | http://miamioh.edu/diversity-inclusion/programs-resources/community-events/celebrating-freedom/
Freedom Summer 1964 Memorial
Tucked into the hillside beside Kumler Chapel on Miami University’s Western Campus is the Freedom Summer 1964 Memorial. Reflect on newspaper headlines from the summer of 1964 that tell the stories of young civil rights workers who trained in Oxford and went on to register African American voters as part of the Mississippi Summer Project.
Tucked into the hillside beside Kumler Chapel on Miami University’s Western Campus is the Freedom Summer 1964 Memorial. Reflect on newspaper headlines from the summer of 1964 that tell the stories of young civil rights workers who trained in Oxford and went on to register African American voters as part of the Mississippi Summer Project.
The Mississippi Summer Project, which became known as Freedom Summer, was a voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations including the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the National Council of Churches. Volunteers confronted violence and segregation laws that made it extremely difficult for African Americans to vote in Mississippi, where less than 7% of African Americans were registered voters in 1964. This grassroots freedom movement brought attention to the violent oppression that black voters in Mississippi faced in their attempts to participate in democracy and helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Before it merged with Miami University in 1974, Western Campus was home to the Western College for Women. In June 1964, nearly 800 college students and young people from around the country participated in two weeks of training on the Western College campus. During this time they lived in the residence halls and were trained in nonviolent resistance and the goals of the voter registration project in the college’s academic buildings. The volunteers went on to help approximately 17,000 African Americans in Mississippi complete voter registration applications and taught 3,000 young African Americans in Freedom Schools, where students learned about black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement, and leadership skills in addition to traditional subjects.
Shortly after they left training in Oxford, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three of the civil rights workers, were brutally murdered in Mississippi. The Freedom Summer 1964 Memorial honors these young men as well as the other participants in Freedom Summer. Three trees planted at the memorial grow as tributes to Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.
Notes for Travelers
Visit Miami University Libraries’ Freedom Summer Text and Photo Archive online to view over 100 photos by journalist Herbert Randall, documents distributed to trainees, and newspaper articles about the events of Freedom Summer before visiting. Take a short walk around Miami University’s Western Campus and you’ll recognize many of the buildings and outdoor areas from photos of the training that took place on campus.
Credits
Bridget GarnaiAdditional Resources
McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.Miami University Libraries Digital Collections. Freedom Summer Text and Photo Archive. Oxford, Ohio: Miami University Libraries, 2019. Retrieved from https://digital.lib.miamioh.edu/digital/collection/fstxt/search
Miami University Art Museum. Faces of Freedom Summer. Oxford, Ohio: Miami University Art Museum, 2014. Retrieved from https://issuu.com/miamiuniversityartmuseum/docs/galleryguide_freedomsummer_fall14w