StoryCorps: The children of Freedom Summer look back

In 1964, civil rights groups organized Freedom Schools: summer programs for kids across the state of Mississippi.

More than 2,500 children attended 41 schools. Classes ranged from literature and math to theater and crafts. But the central focus was government and civic engagement.

Many of the teachers were white college students who had traveled from across the country to participate.

Hattiesburg, Mississippi had six schools – more than any other town.

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Freedom School class at Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, students on the church steps with their teacher. 

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Ethel Murrell (L) Stokes and Theresia Clark (C) at Priest Creek Missionary Baptist Church Freedom School in Palmers Crossing with their teacher volunteer Sandra Adickes (R).

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Folksinger Julius Lester singing for Freedom School students on the steps of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Hattiesburg. Glenda Funchess standing (second from left). 

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The Clark sisters at a church during Freedom Summer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1964.

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Donald Denard (Center) with two other students outside Morning Star Baptist Church.

This was one piece of a larger program called “Freedom Summer.” More than 700 volunteers, from across the country came to Mississippi to register Black voters en masse and fight discrimination at the polls.

Sixty years later, Freedom School students Deborah Carr, Stephanie Hoze, Theresia Clark-Banks, Julia Clark-Ward, Glenda Funchess, and Donald Denard came to StoryCorps to reflect on their memories of that summer.

Archival photos courtesy of Herbert Randall Freedom Summer Photographs, Special Collections in McCain Library and Archives, The University Southern Mississippi. Copyright Herbert Randall.

This broadcast is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Originally aired July, 26, 2024, on NPR’s Morning Edition.