About Freedom Summer
In 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) launched the Freedom Summer project in order to register African American voters in Mississippi.
Over a thousand volunteers received training for Freedom Summer at the Western College for Women (now part of Miami University) in Oxford, Ohio. They then traveled to Mississippi to organize Freedom Schools and to register to vote those who had been denied access to the democratic process.
To commemorate the Oxford workshops, Miami University Professors Ann Elizabeth Armstrong and Mary Jane Berman and an advisory committee of Miami faculty and staff and Oxford residents have planned a number of events for fall 2009.
These events include a 45th reunion for veterans of Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Movement as well as a conference and premier of the play, Down in Mississippi.