History Is Lunch: Bruce Watson, "Freedom Summer; From the Ground Up in Mississippi"

On July 24, 2024, Bruce Watson presented “Freedom Summer: From the Ground Up in Mississippi” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
In 1964, volunteers from across the United States came to Mississippi under the supervision of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to help register Black voters as part of a campaign that came to be known as Freedom Summer. Bruce Watson chronicled that period in his 2010 book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season that Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy.
“Seven hundred college students descended on the state to register voters, teach in Freedom Schools, and live in sharecropper shacks,” said Watson. “But by the time their first night in Mississippi had ended, three volunteers were missing, Black churches had burned, and America had a new definition of freedom.”
Through in-depth interviews with participants and residents, Watson captures the legacy of Jim Crow in Mississippi and the chaos that brought such national figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Pete Seeger to the state. The book depicts the Black Mississippians and northern volunteers-struggling for justice against the White Mississippians who would kill to protect a dying way of life.
Historian Howard Zinn wrote that “Bruce Watson captures, with skill and sensitivity, the drama of that historic summer in Mississippi. He reports the continuous violence, the almost unbearable tension, but also conveys the courage and persistence of black and white volunteers who would remember the experience for the rest of their lives. He does this through personal stories that are poignant and inspiring. This is the best account I have seen of Freedom Summer.”
Bruce Watson is the author of six books, including Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream and Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and The Judgment of Mankind. He earned his BA in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley and his MA in American history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Watson is a senior editor of American Heritage and writes for the online magazine The Attic.
History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores all aspects of the state’s past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on UA-cam and Facebook.